Sustainable Agro-Food Supply Chain in E-Commerce: Towards the Circular Economy

Abstract

The continuous decline in the sustainable agro-food supply chain (AFSC) towards a Circular Economy (CE) has become a matter of great concern for the key stakeholders, including government organizations, businesses, end-users, and farmers. In line with this, the main purpose of this study is to develop a sustainable food Supply Chain Network (SCN). The SCN enables the collection of agro-food grains from different farmers’ locations and delivers the same to food processing units. To design an efficient and effective sustainable pickup and delivery network, a Mixed-Integer Non-Linear Programming (MINLP) mathematical model is formulated. The proposed model achieves the sustainability goal by minimizing the collection costs. The developed MINLP model is solved by using an exact optimization approach in LINGO 18 software. Further, to test the efficacy of the developed model, various computational experiments are performed, varying from small to large size data. The results of these experiments reflect that our model can support businesses in designing an efficient and effective sustainable pickup and delivery network. Lastly, it has been shown that innovative packaging materials can help to minimize the wastage of food.

Unveiling the Influence: Exploring the Impact of Interrelationships among E-Commerce Supply Chain Members on Supply Chain Sustainability

“…It considers the environmental impact of e-commerce activities, such as energy consumption, packaging waste, and transportation emissions [46]. It also recognizes the social dimension of sustainability, emphasizing fair working conditions, ethical sourcing practices, and responsible consumption [47]. By adopting the principles of SSCM, organizations can align their operations with sustainable practices and contribute to the overall sustainability of e-commerce supply chains [48].…”

Does an Alternative Local Food Network Contribute to Improving Sustainable Food Security?

“…The optimization models developed by scholars are diverse, such as reducing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions through a series of engineering processes in food transportation and distribution [37,47]. Moreover, the optimization model is used to reduce food loss and waste, optimize costs, increase farmer welfare, and optimize distribution networks for disasters [50,51].…”

Circular economy in agro food supply chain: Bibliometric and network analysis

“…Many studies have recently focused on the circular economy (Chiaraluce et al, 2021; Esposito et al, 2020; Kowalski & Makara, 2021; Oliveira et al, 2021; Osorio et al, 2021; Prajapati et al, 2022), explaining wastage of food (Corrado et al, 2017) and creation of a framework to create a strategy involving food loss and wastage reduction in the supply chains (Dora et al, 2021). It is very well understood by both industries and scholars that there is a need to reconsider and revisit the current business structures and reinvent it with the help of circular economy which can create new avenues of employment, secondary industries, etc.…”