Plastic Footprint: Global Issues, Impacts and Solutions

Dr. Pankaj Pathak is an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, SRM University, India. She earned her doctorate degree in environmental geotechnology from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India. Her research interests include solid waste management, waste to energy, and sustainable green energy resources.

Dr. Sadia Ilyas is an Associate Professor in Process Metallurgy and a Fellow of the Wallenberg Initiative Materials Science for Sustainability (WISE) at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Natural Resources Engineering, Luleå University of Technology in Sweden. Previously, she has served as a Brainpool Scientist under the National Research Foundation of Korea and held various academic and research positions in South Korea, Pakistan, and China. Dr. Ilyas’s research domain is mainly focused on sustainable technological advancements in natural resources management, urban mining, circular economy, green chemistry, metal-to-microbe interaction, and impact assessment using life-cycle and techno-economic analysis tools.

Dr. Rajiv Ranjan Srivastava is an academician cum industrial researcher specializing in waste management and sustainable environmental technology, with a focus on hydrometallurgical processes and reaction thermodynamics. He is a Senior Researcher at the Center of Advanced Chemistry, Institute of Research and Development, and a Lecturer at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, Duy Tan University, Da Nang (in Vietnam). His interdisciplinary research interests span solid and industrial waste management, urban mining, and the extraction of energy-critical elements for clean and alternative energy production. In addition to his academic work, Dr. Srivastava has made significant contributions to industrial R&D, particularly in the commercialization of metal recycling processes.