Recent advances in green technology and Industrial Revolution 4.0 for a sustainable future

Abstract

This review gives concise information on green technology (GT) and Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0). Climate change has begun showing its impacts on the environment, and the change is real. The devastating COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected lives and the world from the deadly consequences at a social, economic, and environmental level. In order to balance this crisis, there is a need to transition toward green, sustainable forms of living and practices. We need green innovative technologies (GTI) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to develop green, durable, biodegradable, and eco-friendly products for a sustainable future. GTI encompasses all innovations that contribute to developing significant products, services, or processes that lower environmental harm, impact, and worsening while augmenting natural resource utilization. Sensors are typically used in IoT environmental monitoring applications to aid ecological safety by nursing air or water quality, atmospheric or soil conditions, and even monitoring species’ movements and habitats. The industries and the governments are working together, have come up with solutions—the Green New Deal, carbon pricing, use of bio-based products as biopesticides, in biopharmaceuticals, green building materials, bio-based membrane filters for removing pollutants, bioenergy, biofuels and are essential for the green recovery of world economies. Environmental biotechnology, Green Chemical Engineering, more bio-based materials to separate pollutants, and product engineering of advanced materials and environmental economies are discussed here to pave the way toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the UN and achieve the much-needed IR 4.0 for a greener-balanced environment and a sustainable future. Graphical abstract

The fourth industrial revolution in the food industry—part II: Emerging food trends

“…Advanced technologies are being used to unlock new opportunities to revolutionize the way food protein is produced. For example, technological developments and recent advances in green technologies, such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, nonthermal extraction and processing techniques (e.g., pulsed electric field, high pressure processing, and ultrasound) and other Industry 4.0 technologies have enabled the production of protein foods with better nutritional and sensory qualities and reduced energy consumption and gas emissions, from alternative sources, including food wastes and by-products (Bradu et al, 2022;Ozogul et al, 2021). For example, the application of ultrasound was found to provide many advantages (such as enhanced physical stability, improved desirable bacterial fermentation, and reduced pathogenic microorganisms) to plant-based milks (Sarangapany et al, 2022).…”

Towards the smart and sustainable transformation of Reverse Logistics 4.0: a conceptualization and research agenda

“…The research focuses have been predominantly given to the technological development of CPS, IoT, AI, big data analytics, blockchain, additive manufacturing, etc., to achieve predictive maintenance, real-time decision-making, smart manufacturing, and better production control and planning. Besides, these technologies are not only used to improve manufacturing processes but are also applied to enhance supply chain management (Fallahpour et al 2021), innovation (Liu and De Giovanni 2019), and sustainable development (Bradu et al 2022). Particularly, recent research has shown great opportunities to improve sustainability and circular economy with the help of Industry 4.0 (Bag et al 2018;Bai et al 2020), for example, reducing waste generation and improving material utilization by adopting a demand-driven small-scale intelligent production process with additive manufacturing (Ford and Despeisse 2016).…”

Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Industrial Internet Development Environment on Open Green Innovation of Manufacturing Enterprises

“…At present, many scholars have conducted research on Internet development, technological innovation, industrial structure transformation, upgrading, etc., but most of them are about the technological innovation effect of technological innovation on Internet development, the adoption of big data, and the structural adjustment effect of green open innovation (Paunov and Rollo, 2016;Shahbaz et al, 2021;Wang and Yang, 2021;Bradu et al, 2022). According to recent development, green innovation has become a prominent focus for academics and specialists.…”