An international study led by The American University in Cairo (AUC) has found that electronic, industrial and plastic waste could serve as a valuable source of high-performance materials for next-generation sensors used in healthcare, environmental monitoring and food safety.
The study, published in Nature Sensors, was led by Tamer Shoeib, Professor of Chemistry at AUC and the paper’s first and corresponding author, in collaboration with researchers in Australia, Spain and the United States.
The researchers point to a growing global waste challenge, with nearly 62 million tonnes of electronic and industrial waste generated annually and waste volumes rising around five times faster than global recycling efforts.
However, many discarded products contain metals, carbon structures and rare-earth elements that are also essential components of advanced sensing technologies.
“The prevailing mindset treats waste as an end-of-life problem,” Shoeib said. Instead, he argued, discarded electronics contain materials that have already undergone sophisticated refining and manufacturing processes, creating an opportunity to recover valuable resources from landfills rather than relying solely on newly mined materials.
The study reviews advances in technologies capable of transforming waste into useful materials and sensors manufactured from those recovered resources.
Among the applications highlighted is the detection of extremely low concentrations of toxic metals, including cadmium, lead and mercury, in real wastewater samples. Shoeib’s group demonstrated such an approach in a separate study published in npj Clean Water in March 2026.
Waste-derived materials have also been used to develop wearable sensors capable of monitoring biomarkers including glucose and lactate, highlighting potential applications extending beyond environmental monitoring into healthcare.
The researchers propose moving beyond individual recycling technologies towards a circular ecosystem in which distributed upcycling facilities transform locally generated waste into materials for sensors used in public health, agriculture and industrial safety.
Under this approach, the sensors themselves would also be designed for recycling or safe degradation at the end of their useful lives, creating a closed-loop system rather than simply replacing virgin materials with recycled alternatives.
“True innovation is not just replacing virgin materials,” Shoeib said. “It is building a closed-loop system where waste becomes the sensing tool that helps us monitor and heal our planet.”
The collaboration included researchers from AUC, the University of New South Wales in Australia, the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies in Spain, and the University of California San Diego.
The researchers said wider adoption of waste-derived sensor technologies would require coordinated action from governments, industry and consumers, including standards encouraging the use of recycled materials in electronics, investment in local upcycling facilities and stronger demand for sustainably manufactured products.
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