Glass Waste Circular Economy - Advancing to High-Value Glass Sheets Recovery using Industry 4.0 and 5.0 technologies

Due to the ongoing development of urban infrastructure and higher living standards, waste glass has become a significant component of municipal solid waste that cannot be disregarded. To address this issue, researchers have been looking for sustainable solutions to establish Circular Economy best practices for the full value chain of products made of glass, particularly for waste from high-quality glass sheets. Unfortunately, most of this waste is either dumped in landfills or recycled in an open-loop manner, due to its diverse composition and low volume. However, with the advent of Industry 4.0 and 5.0 technologies, including machine-to-machine communication, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, collaborative robots, dynamic life cycle assessment, and advanced remanufacturing techniques, it could now become possible to characterize and recover end-of-life high-quality glass sheets like chemically strengthened glasses, e.g. used in smartphone screens, real time in smart factories for use in other high-tech applications. Such smart factories can economically produce on-demand batch-size 1 products, marking a fundamental transition from conventional recycling methods to a sustainable solution. This paper delves into the integration of Industry 4.0 technologies in glass recycling research and the potential contributions of Industry 5.0, addressing its societal implications. It also introduces an intelligent method to assess and optimize the lifespan of smartphone screen glass, suggesting potential reuse or remanufacturing solutions.