The need to address climate change challenges is evident, and different approaches are proposed worldwide. In the European Union (EU), the solutions to mitigate climate change and develop adaptation capacities to it are regarded as the EU Green Deal. The Green Deal is not only about the development of innovative technological solutions, changes in national environmental policies in EU Member States, and reduction of dependence on fossil fuels but, at first, about a change of mindsets in societies. Scientists have a definite responsibility to achieve climate change mitigation aims. First, to reduce the impacts of climate change, a new level of innovation and a major change in science priorities are required. The aim of this Research Topic was to summarize insights from the Green Deal in the context of circular economy aims. Voulvoulis is analyzing the potential of the transition to a circular economy and the transformation of the current model of consumption to reduce waste. This aspect is of key significance for sustainable development and involves identifying primary development tasks requiring the redesign of economies and decoupling economic growth from material consumption, carbon emissions, and waste generation. Preconditions to achieve a sustainable development model include public support and innovation in technological developments, environmental awareness, and social development. The study by Dimitriou and Karagkouni addresses the sustainability of airport functioning. The sustainability of management decisions is a top priority for airport management and the economic development and provision of necessary services. The study proposes an assessment tool for evaluating airport strategic plans and environmental reporting to promote sustainability. The significance of corporate sustainability management in airport management is closely related to business performance and competitiveness and is thus important in the everyday work of decision-making and routine management in the air transport sector. The multidisciplinary study of Terenius et al. is dedicated to novel applications for data center waste heat, proposing the Datacenter Energy Sustainability Score (DESS). This energy consumption indicator is evaluated within the three case studies and demonstrates how material and social views on metrics provide a way to solve problems for stakeholders. Furthermore, this study emphasizes that a sustainability strategy should be based on material and social views. This Research Topic of Frontiers in Sustainability covers various topics and perspectives and stresses the need to make research-based decisions to promote sustainable development.
Statements
Author contributions
MK: Writing – original draft. MS: Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing. JK: Formal analysis, Writing – review & editing.
Funding
The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Summary
Keywords
Green Deal, circular economy, biorefinery, innovation, climate change
Citation
Klavins M, Smol M and Kruopiene J (2024) Editorial: Novel insights into the Green Deal and its strategies for circular economy. Front. Sustain. 5:1368774. doi: 10.3389/frsus.2024.1368774
Received
11 January 2024
Accepted
15 March 2024
Published
27 March 2024
Volume
5 - 2024
Edited by
Sandro Donnini Mancini, São Paulo State University, Brazil
Reviewed by
Iosif Kapellakis, Neapolis University, Cyprus
Updates
Copyright
© 2024 Klavins, Smol and Kruopiene.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Maris Klavins maris.klavins@lu.lv
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.