Research on the influencing factors of reverse logistics carbon footprint under sustainable development

Exploring the spatiotemporal heterogeneity and influencing factors of agricultural carbon footprint and carbon footprint intensity: Embodying carbon sink effect

Due to the combined effects of carbon emission and carbon sink, agriculture is acknowledged as an essential contributor to achieve the Chinese government's carbon neutrality goal of 2060, and carbon footprint (CF) and carbon footprint intensity are substantial indicators to reveal the carbon emission level. For these reasons, the Theil index technique and extended STIRPAT model were employed to evaluate their spatiotemporal heterogeneity and influencing factors using panel data from 31 provinces for the period 1997-2019. The findings revealed that the CF showed an increasing trend with an annual growth rate of 24.6 %. The carbon footprint intensity (CFI) indicated an evident spatiotemporal heterogeneity and transferred over time, with an average growth rate of 19.82 %. The CFI Theil index and its contribution rate both confirmed that intra-regional difference is the main source of the overall difference, among which, the CFI Theil index displayed the distribution feature of "western (11.50 %) > central (11.12 %) > eastern (10.56 %) > northeast (6.61 %). The contribution rate of CFI illustrated the spatial pattern of "eastern (33.74 %) > central (21.07 %) > western (19.87 %) > northeast (5.24 %). Furthermore, the influencing effects of GDP per capita, planting structure, population density and urbanization level on CF and CFI also demonstrate evident spatiotemporal heterogeneity.

A review of reverse logistics and closed-loop supply chains in the perspective of circular economy

Purpose

This paper presents a systematic literature review of the various aspects of reverse logistics (RL) and closed-loop supply chains (CLSC) in implementing and achieving circular economy (CE) motives. CE is identified as a method of embracing imperishability into the economic structure, helping shift from a linear to a condition leading to ecological and social benefits.

Design/methodology/approach

Systematic literature was used to review a total of 80 peer-reviewed articles are included in the study and covers different concepts related to the implementation of CE, such as cost-saving, network design, sustainable RL, waste management and extended producer responsibility.

Findings

The findings reveal that the research in the domain is in a growing phase, and in recent years, a lot of attention has been given by researchers across the globe. However, further research is required in crucial areas for the adoption of CE, such as retail reverse logistics, pharmaceutical industries and resource recycling industry.

Practical implications

The study discusses the business needs and solutions for industries. Key enablers and barriers are listed along with the main activities involved in each sector in CLSC. Managers can design a pathway to decide which lever to use to overcome a particular challenge.

Originality/value

The work contributes theoretically by developing research themes in RL and CLSC practices applied to CE. It also provides theoretical and practical implications of the study, which can be used as a signboard for further research.

Waste converting through by-product synergy: an insight from three-echelon supply chain

By-product synergy (BPS) is an innovative method to convert waste into valuable by-products effectively. Based on a three-echelon supply chain composed of an upstream manufacturer, a processing plant with limited processing capacity, and a downstream manufacturer, this study derives the production quantity and waste disposal decisions of the upstream and downstream manufacturers as well as the optimal transfer price decision of the processing plant. Moreover, we assess the environmental performance of BPS. Analytical results suggest that the upstream manufacturer's production quantity and waste disposal decisions and the processing plant's transfer price decision are threshold dependent on the processing plant's capacity, whereas the downstream manufacturer's production quantity decision is threshold dependent on the processing plant's capacity and price of raw materials. BPS is beneficial for all members of the supply chain to increase profit. The production promotion and cost-saving effects ensure that the supply chain members maximize their profit. However, BPS does not always have a positive effect on the environment; when the processing plant's capacity and price of raw materials are below the threshold, implementing BPS results in a win-win situation of economic and environmental benefits.

Carbon-efficient closed-loop supply chain network: an integrated modeling approach under uncertainty

Inspired by a circular economy paradigm, an evolving momentum of policies and legislations aims to close the loop of product lifecycles through improved level of recycling, remanufacturing, and reuse, with the objective of adding value to the economy while not endangering the environment. However, the trade-off between the environmental and economic sustainability of designing business processes is inevitable. To address this trade-off in the supply chain context, competing objectives regarding both cost minimization and reduction in carbon emission should be simultaneously considered and integrated into a comprehensive model. This complexity is however elevated when uncertainty of demand is taken into consideration. In this study, the design of a closed-loop supply chain is investigated where competing objectives of cost and sustainability of supply chain operations are evaluated under demand uncertainty. Augmented Weighted Tchebycheff (AWT) and ε-constraint methods are employed to address the multi-objectivity of the problem while a robust optimization approach is applied to deal with the demand uncertainty. The results confirm that the proposed approach provides efficient solutions for designing a green closed-loop supply chain network.

Sustainability Orientation and Focus in Logistics and Supply Chains

Sustainable development, logistics, and supply chain are being combined into three increasingly connected and topical global research areas. Therefore, this paper’s novelty identifies and defines the priorities of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and sustainable development dimensions in supply-chain- and logistics-management-related studies in the last decade. Knowing logistics and supply chain sustainability focus and orientation is valuable information for researchers and managers to adapt and mitigate their business logistics according to the forecasted trends. The paper provides a systematic and comprehensive review of the literature and is based on 116 scientific papers published between 2010 and 2020 in 73 international journals in the Scopus and Web of Science databases. The study defines focus with integrating environmental, social, and economic sustainability for logistics- and supply-chain-related studies. It emphasizes primary and secondary links of investigated studies with 17 United Nations sustainable development goals. The bibliometric analysis also examined keyword relations. One of the main contributions is that economic sustainability was identified as the most represented one-dimensional sustainability focus. It was revealed that supply chain studies integrated all three sustainability dimensions more frequently (50.60%) than logistics studies, which were equally related to studying two- or three-dimensions of sustainability (39.39%). The most significant findings are also that studies were identified to be oriented primarily towards “responsible consumption and production”, “industry, innovation, and infrastructure” and “affordable and clean energy” and secondary especially on “sustainable cities and communities”.

Remanufacturing under energy performance contracting-an alternative insight from sustainable production

Remanufacturing and energy performance contracting (EPC) have attracted much attention recently because of their potential to reduce energy consumption and achieve sustainable production. In this paper, taking carbon emission trading (CET) into consideration, we discussed how EPC affected manufacturer production decision-making. We constructed an optimal production model and analyzed the manufacturer's production decision-making, parameter sensitivity, and economic and environmental effects. Our findings included (1) the implementation of EPC increased the output of new products and the manufacturer's profits. However, EPC did not effectively stimulate remanufacturing, and could increase carbon emissions; (2) CET could alleviate the adverse effect of EPC on remanufacturing and decrease carbon emissions, but may also decrease the total output; and (3) under certain conditions, CET combined with EPC could reduce carbon emissions while increasing the output of remanufactured products and manufacturer's profits. The conclusions of this paper could help the manufacturer to make rational operational decisions and achieve sustainable production.

Reducing carbon emissions from collaborative distribution: a case study of urban express in China

The booming development of e-commerce has brought about rapid growth in the express delivery industry in China. However, urban express distribution is increasingly difficult and seriously affecting the traffic, safety, and environmental conditions of cities due to small, scattered end points, unreasonable allocation of resources, and seriously repeated resource waste. Therefore, there is an urgent need to solve the problems associated with the unreasonable resource allocation of express distribution. In the context of green logistics, a new mode of collaborative distribution based on intelligent end service station (IESS) is proposed. Following the measurement models of carbon emissions, before and after collaborative distributions are provided to prove the environmental benefits of the new mode. The influencing factors considered in the models are the average daily distribution volume, number of distribution sections, vehicle ownership of various types, and their capacity, use, fuel, and power consumption. To verify the models' validity, we conduct an empirical study of five express enterprises in China and make a comparative analysis on the results, which show that the implementation of collaborative distribution can extremely reduce carbon emissions and improve the overall load rate of vehicles. Specially, the use of new energy vehicles can contribute significantly to energy conservation and emissions reduction.

Analysis of the decoupling effect and eco-economic coordination of the resident energy carbon footprint: a case study of Caijiapo Town, a national key town in western China

National key towns are one of the most important units for mitigating China's carbon emissions from urbanisation, industrialisation and agricultural modernisation under China's rural revitalisation strategy. The rise in the carbon footprint (CF) corresponding to increasing populations and energy consumption in national key towns has not been underestimated. This paper aims to explore the impact of local resident energy consumption on the degree of coordination between ecology and the economy. To achieve this objective, the carbon pressure index (CPI), carbon occupancy index (COI) and eco-economic coordination index (EECI) are constructed by applying the CF, carbon carrying capacity (CC) and carbon deficit (CD) of Caijiapo Town from 2012 to 2017. Furthermore, the relationship between the CF, economic growth and per capita disposable income is described based on the decoupling index (DI). The results reveal that, apart from a decline in 2014, the per capita CF of Caijiapo Town has increased, with an average annual growth rate of 16.80%. The CF of different energy sources shows that the CF of natural gas is much larger than those of raw coal, oil and electricity. The DI between GDP, the per capita disposable income of urban and rural residents and the resident energy CF first decreases and then increases. The DI between GDP, the per capita disposable income of urban residents and the resident energy CF is 1.09 and 1.72, and urban residents are the main contributors to the resident energy CF from 2015 to 2017. The CPI and COI show an upward trend, and the eco-economic coordination index (EECI) of Caijiapo Town undergoes a change from poor coordination (grade II) to worst coordination (grade I) from 2012 to 2017. Therefore, the following suggestions are proposed: the CC should be treated as a constraint, energy utilisation should be improved, residents' consumption structure should be optimised, differentiated policies should be implemented for the energy consumption of urban and rural residents and a spatial planning system and operational mechanism should be established that combines multiple regulations into a single regulation.

Superior "green" electrode materials for secondary batteries: through the footprint family indicators to analyze their environmental friendliness

As secondary batteries are becoming the popular production of industry, especial for lithium ion batteries (LIBs), the degree of environmental friendliness will gather increasing attention to their products of the whole life cycle. The research combines the life cycle assessment (LCA) and footprint family definition to establish a framework to calculate the footprint family of secondary battery materials. Through the method, we calculated the values of carbon footprint, water footprint, and ecological footprint about this eight kinds of secondary cathode battery materials with Ni-MH, Li_1.2Ni_0.2Mn_0.6O₂/C, LiNi_1/3Co_1/3Mn_1/3O₂/C, LiNi₀.₈Co_0.2O₂/C, LiFePO₄/C, LiFe_0.98Mn_0.02PO₄/C, FeF₃(H₂O)₃/C, and NaFePO₄/C. When comparing and analyzing their values in each footprint, it can summarize the evaluation method for some secondary batteries by footprint indicators and construct the evaluation system. Through the comprehensive evaluation of footprint family system, the NaFePO₄/C battery gets the best performance of three main footprints when combining 1 kg of cathode materials, while Ni-MH is opposite. Hence, among these eight batteries environmental impacts evaluation, the NaFePO₄/C battery is regarded as the superior "green" battery, albeit the current application is restricted because of the synthesis limitation on large scale and energy density of storage. In LIBs comparison, the FeF₃(H₂O)₃ material shows its characteristics of environmental friendliness, which is expected to be a greener battery material of LIB. In conventional LIBs, the iron-containing cathode materials show lower environmental burden than ternary cathode materials. We can reduce environmental impacts through developing new advanced materials and reducing the content of high sensitivity element in raw materials.

A panel analysis of the sustainability of logistics industry in China: based on non-radial slacks-based method

Previous studies have primarily targeted at positive causal linkages between the logistics industry and economic benefits, resulting in biased findings without the consideration of undesirable social and environmental problems. Therefore, this paper aims to develop a holistic approach to the assessment of logistics efficiency, through considering comprehensive inputs and desirable and undesirable outputs. In specific, contextualized in China, this paper comprehensively examined the spatiotemporal variations of China logistics efficiency and further investigated the impact of some exogenous factors. Results indicate that the overall logistics efficiency of China was low, but temporally showed a trend of increase. Spatially, the logistics efficiency followed the pattern of Eastern > Central > Western > Northeastern. Moreover, for the spatial interaction among adjacent provinces, there occurred high-high patterns in the Eastern, and low-low aggregation in the Western and Northeastern regions. However, along with time, the spatial interaction among adjacent provinces was weakening. For exogenous factors, level of economic development, urbanization level, utilization rate of logistics resources, and location advantage had a significant positive impact on SLE, while the effect of labor quality was not significant. Overall, this paper enriches the theoretical understandings of sustainable logistics efficiency evaluation and unbiasedly inform central and local governments with approaches to optimizing logistics efficiency.

Real-Time Decision Making in First Mile and Last Mile Logistics: How Smart Scheduling Affects Energy Efficiency of Hyperconnected Supply Chain Solutions

Energy efficiency and environmental issues have been largely neglected in logistics. In a traditional supply chain, the objective of improving energy efficiency is targeted at the level of single parts of the value making chain. Industry 4.0 technologies make it possible to build hyperconnected logistic solutions, where the objective of decreasing energy consumption and economic footprint is targeted at the global level. The problems of energy efficiency are especially relevant in first mile and last mile delivery logistics, where deliveries are composed of individual orders and each order must be picked up and delivered at different locations. Within the frame of this paper, the author describes a real-time scheduling optimization model focusing on energy efficiency of the operation. After a systematic literature review, this paper introduces a mathematical model of last mile delivery problems including scheduling and assignment problems. The objective of the model is to determine the optimal assignment and scheduling for each order so as to minimize energy consumption, which allows to improve energy efficiency. Next, a black hole optimization-based heuristic is described, whose performance is validated with different benchmark functions. The scenario analysis validates the model and evaluates its performance to increase energy efficiency in last mile logistics.

Climate mitigation, low-carbon society, and dynamism of educational institutes in a low-income country

This paper aims to investigate carbon footprints of faculty members of University of Agriculture Faisalabad (UAF) associated with income and education in pursuance of a low-carbon society. For the study, 140 UAF faculty members (professors, associate professors, assistant professors, and lecturers) were selected using stratified random sampling technique, and a representative questionnaire was used to record primary data. Moreover, the ordinary least square (OLS) method was used to explain the statistical relationship between income, education, and carbon footprints. It was found that carbon footprints of UAF faculty members were 10.06 metric tons (mt) per year per person on an average. Our results further indicated that carbon footprints of assistant professors, associate professors, and professors were 10.83, 11.95, and 10.96 mt per person per annum, respectively. OLS estimates showed that an increase in one Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) faculty member increases the carbon footprint by 1.15 mt per annum. Male faculty members emit more carbon footprints than females. Faculty members of Tenure Track System (TTS) had a higher income than those of Basic Pay Scale (BPS). Therefore, emissions of TTS faculty members were higher. Hence, in order to reduce carbon footprints and corroborate UAF campus environment-friendly, the attitude towards this aspect should be changed and awareness should be created. Furthermore, reduced car usage can be another bottom-up policy suggestion. As witnessed in green campuses of international universities, UAF should also be a motor-free campus (cycling and pedestrian only).