Waste-Derived Environmental Functional Materials: Turning Trash Into Treasure for Sustainable Development

The continuous accumulation of solid waste and the persistent demand for cleaner water, air, and soil are reshaping materials science around circular resource use. Waste-derived environmental functional materials (WDEFM) offer a route to convert heterogeneous residues from the environment into engineered platforms for remediation and sustainable development. This Review summarizes how municipal, industrial, agricultural, electronic, construction and demolition, and plastic wastes can be reprogrammed into WDEFM through thermochemical, wet-chemical, mechanochemical, physical-engineering, biological/biohybrid, and emerging hybrid strategies. Emphasis is placed on matching the material composition of the feedstock with suitable conversion pathways to produce adsorbents, catalysts, membranes, soil amendments, and carbon-management materials. Across these pathways, processing conditions regulate phase evolution, pore architecture, surface functionality, defect chemistry, interfacial sites, and electron-transfer behavior, which in turn govern performance in water purification, heavy-metal immobilization, organic-contaminant degradation, gas separation, catalytic conversion, and ecological restoration. The Review also considers safety, regeneration, techno-economic analysis, life-cycle assessment, and end-of-life management as requirements for practical deployment. A materials-by-design framework is proposed to guide WDEFM from laboratory demonstrations toward scalable circular technologies.