In today’s turbulent world influenced by globalization, knowledge is becoming a key factor in the market. Every economy, if it wants to be successful and competitive, must pay more attention to knowledge and its creation, transfer, and preservation. In this respect, it is a key element in ensuring a country’s sustainable position in a competitive environment. Based on this, we set out the main idea of the article as follows: increased emphasis on the factors of a knowledge-based economy affects the growth of the country’s competitiveness, which contributes to its better sustainability. To verify the idea, we used a multi-criteria evaluation of countries by the TOPSIS method and a subsequent regression model. We examined developments in the EU countries over a period of 11 years in selected indicators typical for the knowledge economies, in the area of competitiveness. Finally, we examined the sustainability of EU countries. Based on the findings of these methods, we identified the leading country—Sweden—in the field of knowledge economy, competitiveness, and sustainability.

Efficient electronic waste (e-waste) management is one of the vital strategies to save materials, including critical minerals and precious metals with limited global reserves. The e-waste collection issue has gained increasing attention in recent years, especially in developing countries, due to low collection rates. This study aims to search for progressive solutions in the e-waste collection sphere with close-to-zero transport and infrastructure costs and the minimization of consumers’ efforts towards an enhanced e-waste management efficiency and collection rate. Along these lines, the present paper develops a smart reverse system of e-waste from end-of-life electronics holders to local recycling infrastructures based on intelligent information technology (IT) tools involving local delivery services to collect e-waste and connecting with interactive online maps of users’ requests. This system considers the vehicles of local delivery services as potential mobile collection points that collect and deliver e-waste to a local recycling enterprise with a minimum deviation from the planned routes. Besides e-waste transport and infrastructure costs minimization, the proposed smart e-waste reverse system supports the reduction of CO₂ through the optimal deployment of e-waste collection vehicles. The present study also advances a solid rationale for involving local e-waste operators as key stakeholders of the smart e-waste reverse system. Deploying the business model canvas (BMC) toolkit, a business model of the developed system has been built for the case of Sumy city, Ukraine, and discussed in light of recent studies.

The growing concern of climate change has made greenhouse gas emissions, mostly as a result of anthropogenic activities, an important matter of research. The aim of the paper is to perform quantitative evaluation on the relationship between economic development and production of greenhouse gas emissions based on decoupling model theory. The paper focuses on the case of V4 countries in the period of 1991 – 2012. Throughout the more than 20 years examined, the countries spread out into many different forms of decoupling. The results of analysis suggest that in most observed partial variables occurs the strong decoupling of economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions, what can be considered as positive trend. Though decoupling elasticity convey a positive message, data indicate that, in order to meet its 2050 ambitious objectives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the V4 countries will need to accelerate their implementation of new policies, while restructuring the ways how they meet their demand for energy, food, transport and housing

Under the influence of the change in the overall economic environment, the problem of measuring the performance of a company and its financial health is also changing. At present, every agricultural company is exposed to a number of internal as well as external risks, the failure of which can lead to potential bankruptcy. It is a known fact that the risks in agriculture are significantly greater than those in other sectors of the national economy. Proper diagnosis of critical aspects and measuring the development of individual financial indicators of agricultural holdings are basic prerequisites for eliminating these risks and maintaining, as well as increasing, their competitiveness. Among the key tools for measuring the financial situation of a company are bankruptcy models, three of which have been used (Altman model, Taffler model, and Bonity index). The aim of this study was to identify the comprehensive financial health of 469 agricultural enterprises in the Slovak Republic using the three above-mentioned bankruptcy models in 2016. The obtained results were verified using the Kruskal–Wallis test, Levene test, or Moran index. Altman’s model indicated potential future problems of businesses and agricultural cooperatives. Using the Bonity index, the neutral situation was assessed (the financial health could be regarded as neither insufficient nor optimal). Taffler model offered contradicted results and does not expect the occurrence of problems soon. In the study, we also verified the assumption of the dependence of financial health of companies on the legal form and territorial division, which was confirmed to be insignificant.