Green economy and waste management: An inevitable plan for materials science

Covid is giving us many lessons among which one must be to realize that this is the time to act for sustainable future. The smart world around us has made it inevitable to have an alarming situation regarding the uncontrolled growth of waste products such as plastic and electronic wastes. Both are immense threats to the health of human, wildlife and environment, that eventually affect the societal and economic structures as evident from recent Covid-crisis. The proper management of these wastes and innovating ideas for new sustainable technologies are the need of the hour. Circular economy act with green technology (green economy) is the way to tackle this challenge. Current perspective presents the overview of the scenario regarding these burgeoning issues and demonstrates some measures that are taken or being considered to depend on to come out of them. [Display omitted] •Zero Waste Challenge is the idea to guide people in changing their lifestyles and practices to minimize the negative environmental impacts.•Most of the three challenging sectors in waste stream is plastics, electronics and medical.•The main three criteria to adopt green economy is reduce, reuse and recycling of manufacturing products.