By Aleksandra Kekkonen
Today both fields of IT development and circular economy are in the highest interest. A circular economy promises a balanced and sustainable future in a clean and flourish way with well-designed and energy-efficient assets for all stakeholders. IT field in its turn drives economic development, brings science fiction projections in life, and saves (to some extent) the world from Covid consequences making distant work and business processes reality. For sure, all the popular tech trends like AI (artificial intelligence), ML (machine learning), IoT (Internet of Things), Big Data, edge computing, robotic process automation, and others come to ease our lives.
But how those two fields overlap and what influence IT has for circular economy implementation?
First of all, IT field definition should be considered to be more specific in formulations:
- Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to store, retrieve, transmit, and manipulate data or information. Necessary types of IT services include hardware & software, network Infrastructure (a company’s network infrastructure would typically include its internet connectivity and internal networking between computers and other devices (such as printers), mobile device management, cloud computing, and cybersecurity.
Digital technologies play an important role in establishing real-time information exchanges among users, machines and management systems. These technologies are intrinsically customer-focused and provide the information and connections needed to maintain a relationship far beyond the point of sale. Remote visibility and control of assets are especially critical for the Product as a Service, Sharing Platforms and Product Life Extension business models. By altering the way businesses and consumers interact with physical and digital assets and enabling dematerialization, digital technologies can transform value chains, so they are decoupled from the need for additional resources for growth.
Hybrid technology is partly digital and partly engineering. It can establish a unique type of control over assets and material flows. It allows a company to digitally identify the history, location, status and application of materials and goods while, at the same time, support ways to physically collect, treat and reprocess them. For example, 3D printing allows for the local manufacturing of downloadable digital designs into physical objects
Second, the life cycle of products and services in a circular economy should schematically be divided into steps, to find where IT services are crucially needed:
- Product design, manufacturing (including supply chains for procurement), logistics, sales and marketing, product use, R-cycles (reuse, redesign, refurbish, remanufacture, etc. + logistics for all steps), end of life disposal, regeneration of resources, a new cycle.
Let us consider some proposed circular economy steps and check, where the IT field and what technological decisions have the most application of all.
Product design
Product design is one of the main and the most important steps in the circular economy concept. It helps to build better decisions and gives a good opportunity to estimate all production and service steps ahead. For instance, artificial intelligence could be the key to complex data analysis and management aimed at sustainable decision making in such areas as climate change, air, and water security, biodiversity conservation, disaster resilience, etc. at the stage of planning and idea development and measure different variants in scales like money/time/resource efficiency, etc. Besides designing itself using special software saves time, allows to estimate different material use based on mathematical modeling.
If we speak about service-driven decisions, data integration – and more broadly, data architecture and its capabilities is an indispensable part of business applications. This bridges the individual information sources to the business goals of the involved stakeholders and application of those decisions in day-to-day business. This first stage is a resource-intensive step, as data preparation and integration is usually between 60 and 75% of the project time. Given the importance of the underlying data architecture and data integration infrastructure in connecting the collected information to the goals of the circular economy consider how digital technologies can use adequate IT and data management technologies to support material tracking and other specific technologies e.g recycling.
Manufacturing, logistics and R-cycles
The application of IT in the field of manufacturing and R-cycles could be in the manufacturing process itself, infrastructural decisions, supply chains for procurement, reuse, redesign, refurbishment, remanufacture, etc., and logistics for all stages.
There are already some good examples of the application of Big Data in the automotive industry. Big Data is not discussed in isolation, but rather concerning other digital technologies for data handling and analysis such as RDBMS and Distributed File Systems (DFS). There are numerous built-in IoT sensors and shelf-scanning robots that prove to be sustainable in terms of energy savings and customer experience as well as LED lighting, new systems of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning controlled by a smart grid.
Patagonia has an AI central workstation that automatically controls all operational systems from an indoor environment to outdoor irrigation. Bathrooms and toilets are equipped with water control sensors. Even the landscape and plants around the buildings are chosen and designed to diminish water usage. Workers are encouraged to use electric cars and get financial compensation for coming to work by bike or public transport.
Manufacturing comes together with gaining resources for production from supply chains, which in turn could be controlled by large-scaled blockchain technologies. The combination of digital technology and circular thinking can indeed be powerful in reshaping value chains. The use of blockchain could guarantee trustworthy suppliers with proven sustainable and safe resources. The data and information exchange in blockchain technology features is important for all stakeholders to operate effectively and efficiently. Having the information of the product’s life cycle is important for the circular economy and also for byproduct management planning (if applicable for the industry or business).
Sharing platforms as an element of circular economy product use loops require three architecture perspectives (data collection, data analysis, and data integration) together with IoT.
Cloud computing has already empowered energy efficiency and material waste reduction. The increased accessibility of serverless and open-source software minimizes cooling processes, ventilation, and air conditioning in fewer data centers. Adding power management function to e.g. Microsoft products enabled smart energy consumption on end devices, like monitors and hard drives.
End of life disposal and regeneration of resources
Those stages require hybrid technology use. Examples here are following.
ZenRobotics is a robotic waste sorting system that combines modern sensors, industrial robots and Artificial Intelligence to identify and sort mixed waste into valuable recyclables. Unlike traditional sensor-based technologies, ZenRobotics’ robots rely on object recognition that enables more versatile sorting. The robots can be trained to recognize new fractions that allow more flexible waste sorting when the composition of waste changes.
Tianjin Citymine company strives to build a complete supply chain from the waste producer to the resource user, in order to achieve a reverse logistics system of urban waste. Tianjin Citymine has formed an online-offline integrated business. The offline business features both a movable recycle station and an intelligent management system. The online management system can provide data support for the comprehensive management of waste urban mines.
Rubicon’s cloud-based, big-data platform connects waste producers with a network of independent waste haulers across 50 states in the US and Canada, as well as 18 additional countries. This enables higher diversion rates from landfill, creative reuse of waste material, optimised truck routes and the detailed analysis of waste data.
IT plays an important role in the transition towards a Circular Economy by optimizing forward material flows and enabling reverse material flows, dealing with different types of data and building well-designed IT architecture. Top IT trends for circular economy enabling are cloud-based, big-data platforms, artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies. Other direction is hybrid technologies associated with mix of modern sensors (IoT), industrial robots supported by AI and ML technologies.