Digitisation and the Circular Economy: A Review of Current Research and Future Trends

Abstract

Since it first appeared in literature in the early nineties, the Circular Economy (CE) has grown in significance amongst academic, policymaking, and industry groups. The latest developments in the CE field have included the interrogation of CE as a paradigm, and its relationship with sustainability and other concepts, including iterative definitions. Research has also identified a significant opportunity to apply circular approaches to our rapidly changing industrial system, including manufacturing processes and Industry 4.0 (I4.0) which, with data, is enabling the latest advances in digital technologies (DT). Research which fuses these two areas has not been extensively explored. This is the first paper to provide a synergistic and integrative CE-DT framework which offers directions for policymakers and guidance for future research through a review of the integrated fields of CE and I4.0. To achieve this, a Systematic Literature Review (SLR; n = 174) of the empirical literature related to digital technologies, I4.0, and circular approaches is conducted. The SLR is based on peer-reviewed articles published between 2000 and early 2018. This paper also summarizes the current trends in CE research related to manufacturing. The findings confirm that while CE research has been on the increase, research on digital technologies to enable a CE is still relatively untouched. While the “interdisciplinarity” of CE research is well-known, the findings reveal that a substantial percentage is engineering-focused. The paper concludes by proposing a synergistic and integrative CE-DT framework for future research developed from the gaps in the current research landscape.

Assessing relations between Circular Economy and Industry 4.0: a systematic literature review

“…A company willing to become circular cannot avoid considering I4.0 technologies within its value chain. In the literature, several works focused on this direction, especially in the form of reviews (Cattelan Nobre and Tavares 2017; Kuo and Smith 2018;Liao et al 2017;Okorie et al 2018). The most common way to describe the relation between I4.0 and the CE was digitalisation of the CE.…”

“…x (Hughes 2017) x (Isaksson, Hallstedt, and Öhrwall Rönnbäck 2018) x (Jensen and Remmen 2017) x (Jin et al 2014) x (Kölsch et al 2017) x (Kowalkowski et al 2017) x (Kuo and Smith 2018) x (A. Q. Li and Found 2017) x (Liao et al 2017) x (Lopes de Sousa Jabbour et al 2018a) x (Lopes de Sousa Jabbour et al 2018b) x (Mařík et al 2016) x (Moreno and Charnley 2016) x (Neligan 2018) x (Okorie et al 2018) x (Pagoropoulos, Pigosso, and McAloone 2017) x (Planing 2017) x (Prendeville et al 2016) x (Rajala et al 2018) x (Ruggeri et al 2017) x (Sarkis and Zhu 2018) x (Shanshan Yang et al 2018) x (Sinclair et al 2018) x (Smart et al 2017) x (Srai et al 2016) x (Stark et al 2014) x (Stock and Seliger 2016) x (Thomas 2018) x (Tolio et al 2017) x (Townsend and Coroama 2018) x (Ünal, Urbinati, and Chiaroni 2018) x (X. Wang, Ong, and Nee 2018) x (Wilts and Berg 2017) x (B. Xu 2016)…”

“…Depending on the authors, AM can be exploited to (i) improve the overall CE performance ( (Miranda et al 2017), and (iv) improve the traceability of circular practices (Sharpe et al 2018). The IoT is considered by experts as a good method for linking product lifecycle management and digital manufacturing, for example, through cloud computing x x (Dutta et al 2001) x (Fisher et al 2018) x (Giurco et al 2014) x x (Liao et al 2017) x (Lopes de Sousa Jabbour et al 2018a) x (Lopes de Sousa Jabbour et al 2018b) x (Moreno and Charnley 2016) x (Nasiri, Tura, and Ojanen 2017) x (Okorie et al 2018) x (Pagoropoulos, Pigosso, and McAloone 2017) x (Planing 2017) x (Rajala et al 2018) x (Reuter 2016) x (Salminen, Ruohomaa, and Kantola 2017) x (Seele and Lock 2017) x (Srai et al 2016) x (Stock and Seliger 2016) x (Thomas 2018) x (Tseng et al 2018) x (Unruh 2018) x (X. Wang, Ong, and Nee 2018) x Total 5 4 3 13 (Barbosa et al 2016) x (Bassi 2017) x (Deschamps et al 2018) x (Gürdür and Gradin 2017) x (Hehenberger et al 2016) x (Holligan, Hargaden, and Papakostas 2017) x (Isaksson, Hallstedt, and Öhrwall Rönnbäck 2018) x (Jensen and Remmen 2017) x (Kusiak 2018) x (J.…”

“…The CE is an industrial system that is restorative or regenerative by intention and design. This concept replaces the 'end-of-life' concept with restoration, shifts to the use of renewable energy, eliminates the use of toxic chemicals (which impair reuse), and aims for the elimination of waste through the superior design of materials, products, systems, and within this, business models (The Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2013; Bocken et al 2016;Okorie et al 2018). The CE allows the decoupling of economic growth from finite resource constraints, by providing opportunities for business regarding new ways of creating value, generating revenue, reducing costs, being resilient, and creating legitimacy (Manninen et al 2018).…”

Identifying the Equilibrium Point between Sustainability Goals and Circular Economy Practices in an Industry 4.0 Manufacturing Context Using Eco-Design

“…The fourth industrial revolution, driven by digitization and huge volumes of data, represents the potential to leverage circular business models, where renewable resources are consumed, stocks are kept infinitely, and waste is eliminated. This is where Industry 4.0 and the circular economy meet and empower (Okorie et al 2018). On the one hand, the disruptive technologies of the new industry operate as triggers for circular strategies.…”