ABSTRACT The circular economy (CE) transition is a modern challenge for policymakers, utility managers, and consumers, particularly in the water and wastewater sector. It offers essential environmental benefits by reducing resource use, minimizing waste generation, and enhancing water recycling and reuse. This transition is important for addressing challenges in traditional water management, environmental and climate impacts. This editorial introduces the special issue on Circular Economy Policies for Water and Wastewater, outlining its key contributions and discussing the policy implications for sustainable water management systems. The published works of this issue offer valuable insights for evolving the concepts of circularity and sustainability in water and wastewater policymaking agendas. To complement the discussion, we performed a bibliographic investigation focusing on circular economy policies and water and wastewater, to capture works dealing with the whole water cycle. Analysis of the 307 articles located, showed a wide range of topics involved with a worldwide coverage and international collaboration among authors.
Kostakis et al. (2025) studied this question.