In the 21st century, a great amount of electrical and electronic waste (e-waste) has accumulated, and the unregulated nature of its disposal and recycling represents a particular hazard in a global context. For the purposes of e-waste management, there must be more emphasis on the scientific processes for recycling, reusing and remanufacturing precious materials. Resource management is related to energy management; therefore, the harvesting of costly materials from e-waste is important for both energy management and sustainable development. At present, a lack of scientific recycling of a significant amount of e-waste is a source of environmental pollution and health hazards that are having a detrimental effect on sustainable development goals. It is necessary to find a process for recovering valuable materials from e-waste with the minimum possible environmental impact. At present, it is essential to modify the process of electrical and electronic products (e-products) becoming e-waste, and the subsequent process of e-waste recycling, in order to lessen the impact in terms of pollution. E-waste scientific recycling initiatives can reduce the environmental impact of the process, which in turn can support a shift from the current linear flow of costly materials to a more sustainable circular flow. Furthermore, internal consumption loss, emissions, and heating loss from e-products are the main factors contributing to the loss of energy efficiency in the process, which in turn contributes to environmental pollution. Promoting green innovation in the manufacturing process of e-products, as well as their reuse, can reduce the environmental impact of e-waste in near future. Both of these pathways are imperative for a less polluted, low-toxic environment and sustainable development. However, the sustainable development initiative of the United Nation Environmental Programme (UNEP) policy framework is the ultimate goal. This is expected to support the management of environmental pollution, maintaining it at an acceptable level, while also preventing hazardous risks to human health. Hence, this review examines the prospects for achievable environmental sustainability through technological developments.

We derive an exact solution of the Smoluchowski equation for a Brownian particle moving in an arbitrary potential well with a general delocalized sink. The average rate constant for the general sink is expressed explicitly in terms of the corresponding rate constants for localized sinks with different initial conditions and sink positions. Simple analytical expressions are provided for diffusion in a harmonic potential well.

Herein, we study stress–strain diagrams of soft biological materials such as animal skin, muscles, and arteries by Finsler geometry (FG) modeling. The stress–strain diagram of these biological materials is always J-shaped and is composed of toe, heel, linear, and failure regions. In the toe region, the stress is almost zero, and the length of this zero-stress region becomes very large (≃150%) in, for example, certain arteries. In this paper, we study long-toe diagrams using two-dimensional (2D) and 3D FG modeling techniques and Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. We find that, except for the failure region, large-strain J-shaped diagrams are successfully reproduced by the FG models. This implies that the complex J-shaped curves originate from the interaction between the directional and positional degrees of freedom of polymeric molecules, as implemented in the FG model.