In the 1970s, the concept of circular economy emerged in economic literature, and it has started to receive more attention during the last few years (Campbell-Johnston et al., 2020; García-Quevedo et al., 2020; Rajput and Singh, 2019; Shen et al., 2020). This popularity was partly because of the dearth of available natural resources in the environment and significant alterations that have occurred gradually to customers’ behaviours (Gallagher et al., 2019). The circular economy model is mainly aimed at decoupling economic development from the consumption of limited resources. This economic model discusses how to retain products’ components and reserve their materials at their highest value and utility. The circular economy has provided a remarkable opportunity for companies to achieve additional value from their products and, at the same time, take into consideration resource limitations and price volatility. In this system, manufacturers reuse the materials and resources at the beginning of the same process following a production process (Genovese et al., 2017; Merli et al., 2018). Such a circular system has a significant effect on decreasing both cost and waste. It attempts to promote the recycling of materials and will have a positive contribution to the higher acceptability of the company image.

Industry 4.0 plays a crucial role in moving from linear to a circular economy (Chiappetta Jabbour et al., 2020; Mohelska and Sokolova, 2018; Ślusarczyk et al., 2020). It introduces innovative technologies like the IoT with the aim of supporting the efficiency enhancement and automation of the processes that happen in the industry. In comparison, the circular economy can be thought as an essential alternative to the linear economy model that currently prevails; on the other hand, Industry 4.0 technologically enables the users to bring process innovation into the industrial domain. There is a need for novel economic models capable of reducing material inputs and waste generation leveraging on eco-design, recycling and reusing of products, new technologies, and new business models. Some of the most industry 4.0 technologies (Aslanertik and Yardımcı, 2019; Sony and Naik, 2019) (e.g., IoT) have shown the potential required for leveraging the acceptance of circular economy concepts and processes by companies in a way to bring it in an extensive level to our daily life.

In the context of Industry 4.0, IoT has the capacity of supporting the circular economy paradigms by developing a place to well connect sellers and buyers of manufacturing products/services and raw materials in a way to build global supply chains (Garrido-Hidalgo et al., 2020; Mboli et al., 2020; Nobre and Tavares, 2017). The value drivers of the circular economy build “looping assets” and reuse natural resources in order to make use of them with higher efficiency; this way, they can extend the useful lifetime of such resources and maximize their utilization while the IoT value drivers attempt to organize knowledge in regard to asset quality, locations, conditions, and performance in real-time, which helps to realize novel breeds of circular economic. IoT has been proved to have the capacity to solve the resource-related problems that distress the circular economy innovators (Pejic-Bach et al., 2020; Rajput and Singh, 2019).

As a result, researchers interested in this subject need to understand the status quo of the research carried out across the world in order to build a general picture representing the whole subject. Through breaking down structural barriers that have been formed over time between the production process and consumption of products and services, an IoT-enabled circular economy will be able to offer significant opportunities for several sectors, e.g., manufacturing, built environment and infrastructure, energy and utilities, waste management, logistics, fishing, and agriculture. Both officeholders and disruptive innovators are nowadays rethinking their value chains and proposed models with taking into account this point that the digital revolution actually underpins a new economy rather than being just a niche market. Therefore, in this special issue, an attempt has been carried out to present state of the art for leveraging the IoT for circular economy conceptualization. Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit original research and critical survey manuscripts that related to IoT and circular economy with real case studies on the following potential topics and applications, which are essential both locally and internationally,  but are not limited to:

• IoT-enabled circular economy and big data
• Industrial internet of things as an enabler for a circular economy
• Business models enable circular economy using the Internet of things
• IoT-enabled circular economy and sustainable development goals
• Cloud computing and the internet of things for a circular economy
• Business model’s innovation enables circular economy using the internet of things
• IoT-enabled circular economy using neural network artificial intelligence
• IoT-blockchain for a circular economy
• IoT-enabled circular economy using fuzzy sets theory
• Deep learning for the internet of things and circular economy
• IoT-enabled circular economy and supply chain management
• Industrial internet of things and industry 4.0 for a circular economy
• IoT-enabled circular economy and innovative business model and sustainability
• Information technology and the internet of things for a circular economy
• Information systems and internet of things for a circular economy
• IoT-enabled circular economy and closed-loop recycling
• Machine learning for the internet of things circular economy
• IoT-enabled circular economy and blockchain
• Internet of things and big data analytics for a circular economy
• IoT-enabled circular economy using decision making methods

Submission Guidelines. All papers should be submitted to TEDE submission platform: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tted

Researcher has to note that manuscript is a candidate for special issue "Supporting the Circular Economy Transition using the Emergent Role of Internet of Things" and indicate this in "Cover Letter".

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal’s ‘Guidelines for Authors’, which are located at http://journals.vgtu.lt/index.php/TEDE/guidelinesforauthors.

Article Processing Charge (APC) for TEDE journal is € 45 / per page net. This charge includes all costs of the review process, systems, typesetting, web publication and long-term archiving.

Tentative time:

Open for call: 15/01/2021
Deadline of submission: 30/06/2021
Notification of acceptance: 01/11/2021
Publication date: 30/12/2022

Leading Guest Editor
Dr. Abbas Mardani
University of South Florida,
Tampa, United States
mabbas3@live.utm.my

Guest Editor
Dr. Charbel Jose Chiappetta Jabbour
Lincoln International Business School
University of Lincoln
Lincoln, United Kingdom
cjcjabbour@gmail.com

Guest Editor
Prof. Dr. Mario Köppen
Graduate School for Creative Informatics,
Zyuhsu Institute of Technology,
Japan
mkoeppen@ieee.org

Guest Editor
Professor Thanos Papadopoulos,
University of Kent,
United Kingdom
a.papadopoulos@kent

References

Aslanertik, B.E., Yardımcı, B., 2019. A Comprehensive Framework for Accounting 4.0: Implications of Industry 4.0 in Digital Era, in: Hacioglu, U. (Ed.) Blockchain Economics and Financial Market Innovation: Financial Innovations in the Digital Age. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 549-563.

Campbell-Johnston, K., Vermeulen, W.J.V., Reike, D., Brullot, S., 2020. The Circular Economy and Cascading: Towards a Framework. Resources, Conservation & Recycling: X 7, 100038.

Chiappetta Jabbour, C.J., De Camargo Fiorini, P., Wong, C.W.Y., Jugend, D., Lopes De Sousa Jabbour, A.B., Roman Pais Seles, B.M., Paula Pinheiro, M.A., Ribeiro da Silva, H.M., 2020. First-mover firms in the transition towards the sharing economy in metallic natural resource-intensive industries: Implications for the circular economy and emerging industry 4.0 technologies. Resources Policy 66, 101596.

Gallagher, J., Basu, B., Browne, M., Kenna, A., McCormack, S., Pilla, F., Styles, D., 2019. Adapting Stand-Alone Renewable Energy Technologies for the Circular Economy through Eco-Design and Recycling. Journal of Industrial Ecology 23(1), 133-140.

García‐Quevedo, J, Jové‐Llopis, E, Martínez‐Ros, E. Barriers to the circular economy in European small and medium‐sized firms. Business Strategy and the Environment. 2020; 29: 2450– 2464. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.2513.

Garrido-Hidalgo, C., Ramirez, F.J., Olivares, T., Roda-Sanchez, L., 2020. The adoption of internet of things in a circular supply chain framework for the recovery of WEEE: the case of lithium-ion electric vehicle battery packs. Waste Management 103, 32-44.

Genovese, A., Acquaye, A.A., Figueroa, A., Koh, S.C.L., 2017. Sustainable supply chain management and the transition towards a circular economy: Evidence and some applications. Omega 66, 344-357.

Mboli, JS, Thakker, D, Mishra, JL. An Internet of Things‐enabled decision support system for circular economy business model. Softw Pract Exper. 2020; 1– 16. https://doi.org/10.1002/spe.2825.

Merli, R., Preziosi, M., Acampora, A., 2018. How do scholars approach the circular economy? A systematic literature review. Journal of Cleaner Production 178, 703-722.

Mohelska, H., & Sokolova, M. (2018). Management approaches for Industry 4.0 – the organizational culture perspective. Technological and Economic Development of Economy, 24(6), 2225-2240. https://doi.org/10.3846/tede.2018.6397.

Nobre, G.C., Tavares, E., 2017. Scientific literature analysis on big data and internet of things applications on circular economy: a bibliometric study. Scientometrics 111(1), 463-492.

Pejic-Bach, M., Bertoncel, T., Meško, M., Krstić, Ž., 2020. Text mining of industry 4.0 job advertisements. International Journal of Information Management 50, 416-431.

Rajput, S., Singh, S.P., 2019. Connecting circular economy and industry 4.0. International Journal of Information Management 49, 98-113.

Shen, K.- wen, Li, L., & Wang, J.-Q. (2020). Circular economy model for recycling waste resources under government participation: a case study in industrial waste water circulation in China. Technological and Economic Development of Economy, 26(1), 21-47. https://doi.org/10.3846/tede.2019.11249.

Ślusarczyk, B., Tvaronavičienė, M., Ul Haque, A., & Oláh, J. (2020). Predictors of Industry 4.0 technologies affecting logistic enterprises’ performance: international perspective from economic lens. Technological and Economic Development of Economy, 1-21. https://doi.org/10.3846/tede.2020.13376.

Sony, M., Naik, S.S., 2019. Ten Lessons for Managers While Implementing Industry 4.0. IEEE Engineering Management Review 47(2), 45-52.