“Leveraging Digital Technologies for Circular Economy: Exploring the Role of AI, IoT, and Blockchain in Overcoming Future Challenges”

The shift toward a circular economy offers a critical opportunity to address the environmental and resource depletion road-blocks driven by traditional linear economic models. The world of circular economy practices aims to design waste out of the system, extend product lifecycles, and enable closed-loop systems where resources are reprocessed and cast-off efficiently. However, transitioning to such a model at scale by firms and entities requires overcoming significant operational, logistical, and systemic barriers. Digital technologies, particularly Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, and Blockchain, offer transformative potential to mitigate these road-blocks and allow the successful implementation of circular economy principles across industries. This study explores the part of the recent technologies in overcoming the key challenges closely connected with the achievement of circular economy. While earlier studies indicate that technologies such as Artificial Intelligence can optimize resource management by enabling predictive maintenance, improving manufacturing processes, and enhancing decision-making capabilities for sustainable product design. IoT by connecting physical assets through real-time monitoring and data collection across the entire product lifecycle enables precise tracking of materials and facilitating efficient resource use. Blockchain, with its decentralized system, augments transparency and accountability in circular supply chains, allowing for secure and trustworthy data on product provenance, recycling, and material reuse. The research adopts a mixed-methods approach, integrating case studies of industries that have successfully implemented these technologies in circular economy initiatives with a detailed analysis of the environmental and economic impacts.