Circul8: Supporting Circularity Decision Making with a Component-based Real-Time Monitoring Tool for IT Asset Management

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Harmful chemicals and metals from e-waste affects our environment and human health. The UK produced 24.9 kg ewaste per person in <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2016,10 ~kg</tex> more than the EU average. A typical laptop manufacturing produces 331 kg of CO2 emissions. Early routine maintenance typically extends the use cycle of 3 to 5-year-old computers to at least 9 years. While circular economy (CE) frameworks present a promising approach to reducing this environmental burden, putting circularity into practice remains a significant challenge. A barrier to repairing and reusing electronic products is the lack of information and efficient decision systems to allow people to make informed choices. This paper introduces Circul8, a real-time monitoring and analytics tool designed to enhance data-driven circular asset management. Developed through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) between the University of Hull and Techbuyer UK Ltd, Circul8 continuously collects non-intrusive telemetry data from core hardware components, including CPU, memory, storage, and battery usage. The platform features a lightweight agent for data collection, secure MQTT-based data transmission, a time-series analytics backend, and an interactive dashboard for visualising trends and detecting anomalies. Deployed across 70 laptop devices, Circul8 demonstrated its ability to identify performance degradation, thermal anomalies, and component stress-empowering timely and cost-effective maintenance decisions. The tool's open-source release further promotes replicability and cross-sector adoption, embodying cocreation principles and open innovation in sustainable IT.