The textile industry, a vital contributor to Pakistan’s economy, faces pressing challenges in transitioning towards sustainability amid global environmental concerns. This manuscript presents a comprehensive case study on the implementation of IoT-driven strategies in the Pakistani textile sector to achieve digital and sustainable transformation. The findings reveal that the implementation of IoT technologies facilitated real-time environmental monitoring, enabling compliance with regulatory standards, and fostering sustainable manufacturing practices. Ultimately, this manuscript offers valuable insights into the transformative potential of IoT technologies in driving sustainable practices in the textile industry. The case study serves as a benchmark for other textile-producing regions aiming to embark on a digital and sustainable journey. These findings hold significant implications for the ongoing dialogue on sustainable industrial development, providing valuable direction for policymakers and stakeholders in shaping a more resilient and ecologically conscious future. Future research should prioritize addressing issues like data confidentiality and interoperability while adhering to standard requirements. Additionally, exploring analytics and machine learning methods for predictive maintenance, optimized performance, and operational improvement is crucial.

Purpose: This study proposes a mobile application to enhance the coffee supply chain (CSC) by leveraging advanced technologies. It addresses the critical need for transparency, traceability and sustainability in the global market from conception to implementation, ensuring innovation. Design/methodology/approach: The application integrates blockchain, radio-frequency identification and barcode technologies for accurate data tracking and recording throughout the supply chain. Its features encompass farm inspections, data capturing (e.g. coffee variety, environmental conditions and inputs like fertilizers), shipment management and processing, ensuring seamless operations across stakeholders. Findings: The application improves traceability, enabling better decision-making in transportation, inventory and purchases while promoting sustainability. By optimizing operational efficiency through real-time monitoring and logistics, it reduces costs by up to 20% and inventory carrying costs by 15–25%. It supports precision agriculture, boosting crop productivity by up to 15% and aligns with just-in-time (JIT) principles to minimize delays and storage costs. Additionally, it addresses counterfeiting and unethical practices, supports ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 compliance and promotes sustainable practices, reducing waste and improving livelihoods, profitability and trust across the supply chain. Research limitations/implications: While this study highlights the transformative potential of digital technologies in agricultural supply chains, further research is needed to understand and address the specific barriers to technology adoption in diverse regional contexts. Key challenges include inadequate digital infrastructure in rural coffee-growing regions, the high costs associated with Internet of things and blockchain deployment and the varying levels of digital literacy among smallholder farmers. Additionally, regulatory discrepancies across countries can impact the feasibility and scalability of these technologies, necessitating policy interventions to support widespread adoption. Practical implications: The application fosters sustainable agricultural practices, fair trade and regulatory compliance while enhancing operational efficiency, accountability and stakeholder trust. Social implications: The proposed mobile application significantly impacts the CSC by addressing key social challenges. It empowers smallholder farmers through tools that enhance transparency, enabling access to premium markets and fostering fair trade. The platform promotes ethical sourcing, combating labor exploitation and supports sustainable practices to improve environmental and socio-economic conditions. By offering traceability, it strengthens consumer trust and encourages accountability across the supply chain. Additionally, it fosters collaboration among stakeholders, creating a shared value ecosystem that ensures equitable benefits. Overall, the application contributes to a more inclusive, ethical and sustainable coffee industry, aligning with global development and sustainability goals. Originality/value: This work presents an innovative, comprehensive solution for optimizing the CSC. By covering the entire workflow and leveraging advanced technologies, the application significantly improves environmental, social, economic and governance outcomes, paving the way for a more efficient and responsible coffee industry.

The coffee industry is an important economic sector in Latin America, Africa, and Asia; however, it faces environmental challenges like resource depletion, biodiversity loss, and climate change. This study evaluates the sustainability of Italian coffee cultivation, contrasting its environmental impacts with major producers in Brazil, Colombia, and Africa. Using a Life Cycle Assessment with the Ecoinvent database and the Environmental Footprint 3.1 impact assessment method, the study analyzes supply chain from cultivation to disposal, and evaluates strategies for reducing environmental impacts and improving resource efficiency. One contribution of this study is the comparison of wet and dry processing methods, showing lower environmental impacts for dry processing method and examining waste valorization strategies. Findings indicate that cultivation and consumption stages dominate greenhouse gas emissions and water use. While Italy's coffee production is smaller in scale, its environmental trends align with those of larger producers. Waste valorization, particularly of spent coffee grounds, was identified as a potential mitigation strategy because SCGs contributed more than 30% of total environmental impacts. Proposed interventions, such as biogas production and organic fertilizer use, reduced emissions from 3.5 to 0.62 kg CO2-eq/kg of coffee. These measures also improved the Net Energy Ratio (NER) from 0.82 to 2.2 and reduced fossil resource use from 9.9 MJ/kg to 6.5 MJ/kg of roasted coffee. Challenges in LCA application, including data variability and limited regional specificity, highlight the need for sensitivity analyses and tailored methodologies. Future studies should incorporate region-specific datasets and sensitivity analyses to improve the robustness of LCA results.

The twin transition, combining digitalization with circular economy strategies, has emerged as a critical pathway for achieving sustainable production and consumption. However, existing approaches largely treat digital tools and circular practices as isolated interventions, limiting their systemic impact across interconnected value chains. This study proposes a DigiCircular Twin-Transition (DT²) framework, a cross-sector digital twin architecture that integrates real-time life cycle assessment with circular economy governance to enable data-driven sustainability control. The framework federates digital twins from the coffee, textile, logistics, and traceability domains into an integrated decision layer, allowing sustainability indicators to function as operational control variables rather than retrospective reporting metrics. A unified Sustainability Efficiency Index and cross-sector resource-synergy modeling enable multi-objective optimization of energy use, water consumption, emissions, and material circularity. Controlled DT² evaluation experiments indicate substantial improvements compared to baseline operations, including a 30% reduction in aggregate environmental impacts, a 25% increase in resource efficiency, a 20% extension in product life cycles, and a 38% improvement in return on investment over a 10-year horizon. Interoperability and decision reliability are ensured through a federated data schema aligned with ISO 23247 and IEC 62890, while Monte Carlo robustness testing (N = 10,000) and Pareto-front analysis indicate stable and simultaneous optimization of environmental and economic objectives. By embedding verifiable performance synchronization through blockchain-backed governance, the DT² framework extends sustainability management toward predictive and auditable operational monitoring, providing a scalable conceptual and technical framework aligned with SDGs 9, 12, 13, and 17 and global net-zero transition pathways.