Industrial Waste Management for a Circular Economy: Critical Perspectives on Prevention, Recovery, Treatment, and Resource Valorization

Abstract

Industrial waste management is often framed as technology selection, although sustainability depends on prevention, material quality, residual fate, and the displacement of primary production. This purposive critical integrative review examines industrial wastewater, sludges, and solid production residues using 106 cited sources: 42 retained papers from an initial 47-paper full-text collection and 64 complementary sources. It does not claim systematic or exhaustive coverage. The synthesis compares prevention, industrial symbiosis, treatment and recovery through functional equivalence, representative operating conditions, mass and energy balances, and life-cycle trade-offs. A retrospective audit identifies four retained studies at controlled-experiment level, one with continuous laboratory operation, one with field-pilot evidence, and one with enterprise-scale evidence; the other 35 provide review, observational, or modelling evidence rather than operational validation. High removal or yield can coexist with intensive chemical use, secondary residues, uncertain substitution, and fragile economics. The resulting five-gate framework operationalizes recurring evidence gaps through prevention, representative performance, residual and exposure control, life-cycle sustainability and economic additionality, and implementation feasibility. Its contribution is an evidence-linked checklist, not a new assessment method or validated technology ranking. Environmental LCA, techno-economic assessment, social LCA, and explicitly framed carbon accounting support the gates. Decisions should advance only when the information needed for the next commitment is available; unresolved safety or burden-transfer risks require redesign rather than an automatic move to more intensive treatment.