sed command to replace one word with environment variable value which contains / code example

Example 1: sed replace with variable

For using match in sed replacement, just border it with '\(' and '\)':
echo Before123 | sed 's/Before\([0-9]*\)/\1After/g'
123After	# number is matched withtin '\( \)' and replaced in '\1'
Example with 2 match replacements
echo a_b | sed 's/\(^.*\)_\(.*$\)/first is \1 and \2 is after/g'

Example 2: sed replace with variable

Use double quotes to make the shell expand variables while preserving whitespace:

sed -i "s/$var1/ZZ/g" "$file"