Green Logistics

In the case of green logistics, all of the issues that pertain to regular logistics still apply, with the added factor of environmental friendliness. However, sometimes making products environmentally friendly creates economic concerns. For example, a beverage manufacturer could reduce the use of plastics by making thinner bottles, thereby cutting down on shipping costs. In other instances, making a product environmentally friendly may cost more, causing it to come into conflict with traditional logistics.

Green logistics is a form of logistics that is considered to be environmentally and often socially friendly in addition to economically functional. The awareness of green logistics started as early as the 1980s. The several companies then were concerned with developing green logistics, and interest in the concept soared with increased consumer concerns about how products were manu­factured and delivered in the early twenty-first century. Many business organizations have their environmentally friendly policies and practices in place and others were interested in adopting green logistics in phases.

Green logistics is concerned with reducing environmental and other negative impacts associ­ated with the movement of goods. It is also called as sustainable logistics. Sustainability practices seek to ensure that decisions made today do not have an adverse impact on future generations. Green logistics seek to reduce negative impact by redesigning sourcing, distribution systems, and managing reverse logistics so as to eliminate any inefficiency, unnecessary freight movements, and dumping of packaging.

Green logistics is all about increasing the efficiency of transport, container, and fleet manage­ment with an environmentally friendly approach. The overall concept offers potential savings for vehicle transportation in the truck-kilometers and reduction in a release of CO₂ in the environ­ment. The attempt will be container control to reduce the number of empty-load kilometers trav­eled, resulting in a significant reduction in transport-related CO₂ emissions.

A good example of one logistics aspect that poses great risk to the environment is packag­ing. Packaging represents one of the greatest challenges to environmentally friendly logistics, while at the same time being vital in shipping and storage. Packaging has consequences on how much of a product can be stored, how it is stored, transported, and handled in a given space. This can increase the unit cost if the packaging hinders optimization of storage space. Many industries have developed forms of packaging that do all that is required of them in transit, but do not justify the expense of returning them to the point of origin. This packaging is only used once and then discarded. This principle goes all the way down to the level of individual tins or cartons of food.

Packaging presents the greatest challenge to logisticians as, increasingly, there is a responsibil­ity for the supplier and the buyer to recover and recycle or effectively dispose of packaging.

In logistics, shippers need to seek out carbon-efficient carriers. Two of the biggest sources of CO₂ emissions can be found during the manufacturing and transporting process. If companies can openly share information, the logistics service provider can analyze existing practices and make proposals to optimize the supply chain and reduce both CO₂ emissions and costs. The green prac­tices include better stuffing practices, which means better container utilization and converting to different modes of transport, especially to sea from air and to rail from road and shipping with a more CO₂-efficient ocean carrier. Hence, for “greening” supply chain logistics should achieve a more sustainable balance between economic, environmental, and social objectives. The green sup­ply chain practices can be best summaried as follows:

• Align supply chain goals with business goals.
• Evaluate supply chain as a single life-cycle stream.
• Use green supply chain analysis as catalyst for innovation.
• Focus on source reduction to minimize waste.

Thus, green supply chain management takes into account all suppliers in various stages of the manufacturing process, transportation of finished goods and services, and the integration of reverse logistics. A green supply chain utilizes recyclable material, streamlines distribution pro­cesses, reduces redundancies, minimizes waste to provide cost benefits to society, people, nature, business, and economy, ensuring pollution reduction, environmental stewardship, reduced opera­tional costs, streamlined processes, and better supplier relationships.

Source: Sople V.V (2013), Logistics Management, Pearson Education India; Third edition.