Environmental sustainability in logistics and freight transportation

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to categorise the research on environmental sustainability in logistics and transportation on the basis of the main themes and study methods and proposes directions for future research. Design/methodology/approach -The review is based on 72 papers published from 1994 to 2011 in international peer-reviewed journals. The academic papers were analysed and categorised according to both their defining characteristics (i.e. year of publication, journal title, regions addressed, and research methodology adopted) and the themes tackled. Five key themes were examined: sustainability initiatives, reasons for adoption, benefits achieved following adoption, critical issues and barriers to adoption, and the evaluation and measurement of environmental initiatives. Findings -While many studies have addressed the issue of environmental sustainability within the supply chain as a whole, papers focusing specifically on environmental sustainability within logistics and freight transportation are fewer and relatively more recent. Although researchers have started to examine the decision-making process involved in environmental sustainability adoption in recent years, many themes, such as sustainability evaluation and measurement, and the level of adoption of sustainability initiatives in the context of the third-party logistics (3PL) industry are under-represented in the literature. As far as the methodology is concerned, our review revealed that many articles are either conceptual papers or empirical studies (i.e. mostly based on surveys or case studies), while simulation and analytical modelling have rarely been addressed. Research limitations/implications -While efforts were made to be all-inclusive, some research efforts may have inadvertently been omitted. However, the authors believe that this review provides an accurate representation of the body of research on environmental sustainability in logistics and transportation published during the specified timeframe, and that the resulting assessments are reliable. Originality/value -The paper offers a guide to the previous research on this topic and identifies the most important issues that need to be addre...

Environmental Sustainability in Third-Party Logistics Service Providers: A Systematic Literature Review from 2000–2016

“…In fact, environmental issues were hardly mentioned in previous 3PL literature reviews [15][16][17]. A number of literature reviews on this topic have been published [18][19][20][21][22]. Nevertheless, several limitations plague these reviews.…”

“…The two database were selected because they provide a broad coverage of management journals. This searching procedure is widely accepted and has been adopted in previous literature reviews [18,21,22,32,33]. The third step includes the definition of both searching and the inclusion/exclusion criteria.…”

“…The most relevant limitation concerns the different focuses adopted by these studies. Some reviews have used a wide focus as in the cases of Marchet et al (2014) [18] and Abbasi and Nilsson (2016) [20], who studied themes concerning environmentally sustainable activities of companies involved in logistics and transportation processes. Other reviews are based on a more narrow focus such as environmental sustainability and knowledge management in 3PLs [19], carbon management in the logistics and transportation sector [21] and environmentally-sustainable freight transportation [22].…”

Environmentally Concerned Logistics Operations in Fuzzy Environment: A Literature Survey

“…Ilgin and Gupta [1] indicated that CLSCM is simultaneously controlled by upstream and downstream channels; whereas Guide and Van Wassenhove [48] stated that reverse material flows dominate the forward supply chains within CLSCM operations. Reverse logistics, which is also described as reverse SCM, is part of the process that collects used materials within CLSCM aimed at maintaining environmental sustainability within SCM [6,56,57]. Kongar et al [57] emphasized that reverse logistics activities focus on finding environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable solutions through the transparency of information with regards to the logistics flows.…”

Low-Carbon Warehousing: Examining Impacts of Building and Intra-Logistics Design Options on Energy Demand and the CO2 Emissions of Logistics Centers

“…The purpose of the formal analytical integrated model is the determination of the logistics center energy Z(E Log ) = energy status of intra-logistics base elements (energy demand); Z(E GTA ) = energy status of building technology base elements (energy demand); w i = impacts and interrelation between base elements due to specific parameters; v i = behavioral impacts of the base elements due to their technical parameters; u i = impacts from the environment due to boundary parameters; w 1 = losses (technological loads) as process-oriented heat source; w 2/3 = energy recovery/process-independent heat source; w 4 = characteristics of building material; w 5 = material flow layout; w 6 = regulatory requirements for energy efficiency and fire protection; v 1 = operational task (payload, acceleration, distance, . .…”