When I started to write Sorbents Materials for Controlling Environmental Pollution, the COVID-19 pandemic was not hitting the world. At that time, I wrote the following for the Preface: “This book focuses on sorbent materials as tools to control environmental pollution, trying to put together data for different environmental compartments, various kinds of pollutants and sorbents, and showing some differences related to geographical location”.

However, in the Conclusions section of the book, which was written more recently, we can find the following: “Finally, an additional field of research within the subject could be the specific use of sorbent materials to retain/inactivate viruses and bacteria”.

It is sure that the current situation has an especial role affecting what we do, and this lasting one year now, probably prolonged for many months.

All that previously written, placed at the start and at the end of the book, was (and is) true. The world continues to go around, and the show must go on, but many things are different.

What about us, people working on science, on environmental aspects, on soil science, or people working on whatever, or the whole society, experiencing effects due to environmental pollution, which could be even promoting pandemic diseases?

We must keep fighting environmental pollution, working for a better world. In fact, many people around the world have started to work together against SARS-CoV-2. Some of the colleagues contributing chapters to this book are in this front, and especially some of my close colleagues in Galicia, Spain, Italy, the UK, India, China, and the USA, are collaborating in new lines related to SARS-CoV-2 in the environment. Some of us are preparing a new book related to this, and we have already published various papers in research journals, as well as edited special issues focused on these problems.

On the pathway, as in this book, we will find our friends, the old good sorbent materials, ready to be recycled, aiding us in the fight. Sorbents, raw or modified, are some of our best metaphoric “laser swords”. Let us empower all people working or contributing to whatever that would aid the planet to overcome climate warming, deforestation, overall environmental pollution, antibiotic resistance, pandemic diseases, … All we could be Jedi. Yes, we should try. May the Force be with us!

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