This issue, the final issue for 2010, represents the successful conclusion of the third year of publication for International Journal of Sustainable Engineering. The Editors are grateful for the support that they have received from colleagues engaged in the publication process and acknowledge the support of the authors and reviewers who have enabled the publication of the highest quality papers in sustainable engineering.
In this issue, we are publishing six papers on a variety of themes. We lead with the second part of a review paper by Baeyens et al. that considers the recovery and recycling of glass, plastic and metals (part 1 was published in Volume 3, Issue 3, pp. 148–158). This is followed by a paper by Ijomah and Chiodo which considers the application of active disassembly to the profitable remanufacture of small electrical and electronic products. Following an analysis of the literature on sustainability, Hasna provides a classification to enable engineers to better understand the links between sustainability philosophy and practice. In the fourth paper, Yang et al. present a multi-attribute decision-making method to deal with decisions encompassing function, cost and environmental performance for scheme selection in green design. Continuing with the theme of green, or sustainable, product design, Vinodh and Rajanayagam present a case study on the application of CAD and DFM to the redesign of a switch handle. In the final paper, Ashour and Wu provide an assessment of the performance of several alternative natural fibres in the production of earth plaster. This selection of papers is complemented by a review of a book entitled: ‘Electronic Waste Management’.
The Editors are committed to supporting the publication of papers which will enable the Journal to have the highest visibility and are focused on raising the quality and impact of these papers. For 2011, we increase the number of pages that we publish to 384 from the original 320 that we have achieved since the launch of the Journal three years ago. This increase reflects the steady growth in high-quality paper submissions and a step towards our goal to increase the number of issues each year from four to six.
We can only continue our progression with the continued support from our community and we extend an invitation to our existing and prospective authors to submit papers to our Journal. We also invite conference organisers to consider the opportunity for publishing selected and extended papers as thematic special issues. Equally, the Editors would welcome suggestions for non-conference special issue topics and nominations for special issue editors.