RETRACTED: Towards Sustainable Concrete Composites through Waste Valorisation of Plastic Food Trays as Low-Cost Fibrous Materials (Sustainability, (2021), 13, 4, (2073), 10.3390/su13042073)

The journal retracts the article “Towards Sustainable Concrete Composites through Waste Valorisation of Plastic Food Trays as Low-Cost Fibrous Materials” [1] cited above. Following publication, concerns were brought to the attention of the Editorial Office relating to the potential duplication of images between this article and other publications [2,3], produced by the same authorship group. Adhering to our standard procedure, an investigation was conducted by the Editorial Office and Editorial Board that confirmed a high level of similarity between Figure 7 [1] and Figure 8 [2] and Figure 14 [1] with Figure 12 in the retracted article [3], reporting different materials. While the authors cooperated with the Editorial Office during the investigation, they were unable to satisfactorily explain the similarities. Consequently, the Editorial Board and Editor-in-Chief were unable to confirm the reliability of the findings and subsequently decided to retract this paper as per MDPI’s retraction policy (https://www.mdpi.com/ethics#_bookmark30). This retraction was approved by the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Sustainability. The authors did not provide a comment on this decision.