The quality of surface water has a significant impact on human health and the entire ecological system. Sewer spillages from the surrounding informal settlements discharging into the river, carrying high concentrations of fecal coliforms, are one of the major causes of extreme pollution in the rivers of South Africa. These informal settlements are common in many developing countries, and they are usually located near waterways to compensate for basic demands for water, sanitation, and recreational space, where municipal infrastructure lags behind urban growth. One major problem has been poor sanitation and poor waste disposal practices in the informal settlements, which has led to the contamination of water resources. This study aims to assess the extent to which poor sanitation in informal settlements impacts the water quality of South African rivers, given the rapid rise in population and unemployment rate. The study also highlights health and environmental issues in the local regions caused by poor sanitation. Contamination of water bodies is associated with serious health problems and fatalities. Therefore, there is a need for frequent monitoring and management of waste products discharged into the neighboring aquatic environments.

In this fast-moving world, we use many electronic items daily to fulfill our daily work. Also, in the fast-growing economy, electronic items play key roles. India’s e-waste is projected to be around 18 lakh metric tons. According to industry sources, electronic trash will climb to almost 50 lakh metric tons in the next three years. According to government sources, only ten percent of electronic waste is gathered. These electronic items and batteries contain many heavy metals that are hazardous to humanity’s and the environment’s health. These heavy metals should be retrieved from the disposed of e-waste, so the resource can be reused or recycled, rather than continuously extracting heavy metals from the earth’s crust. In 2015, The “Initiative on Environmental Threats of Electronic Waste” was introduced by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). This project is part of the Indian government’s ‘Digital India’ strategy. There is an immediate need to implement green supply chain management and resource recovery from electronics waste so that circular material management (SDG 12) & sustainability can be achieved. This article demonstrates the problems and presents E-Waste recycling procedures, Life cycle assessment of E-waste, and EPR practices, along with potential areas for improvement. The bibliometric analysis was performed using R-studio biblioshiny tools for the last 53 years and 1243 published articles to understand the research trends.

Rice milling involves shelling and polishing paddy grains to produce rice- both raw and parboiled. Parboiled rice production requires a massive quantity of freshwater for soaking, which, in turn, generates a large amount of wastewater. If this wastewater is not properly ameliorated, it can cause tremendous troubles of surface water pollution, land pollution, and, ultimately, groundwater pollution. Therefore, proper treatment of polluted water from rice mills (PWRM) as per the effluent discharge norms is necessary to protect the surface and subsurface water resources for sustainable development. There are two methods for remediating rice mill wastewater- physicochemical and biological. The biological methods produce comparatively less sludge and are cost-effective. Moreover, these processes are capable of retrieving green energy in the form of biomethane, biohydrogen, and bioelectricity to augment bio-fuel production, aiming to meet the ever-increasing fuel demands caused by rapid industrialization, motorization, and urbanization. The focus on green energy production is gaining momentum day by day due to the adverse effects of conventional energy derived from fossil fuel combustion in terms of enhanced Air Pollution Index (API) in the ambient atmosphere. In this paper, anaerobic biodegradation, phytoremediation, phyco-remediation, and microbial fuel cell techniques adopted by various researchers for remediating the polluted water from rice mills have been well addressed and critically discussed. The pros and cons of these biological methods have been well addressed to assess the socio-technoeconomic feasibility of each method.