Introduction
The rapid development of economics, globalization and technological progress lead humanity to improve the quality of life worldwide. Despite the profound outcomes of such changes, the environmental damage is devastating and requires industries to take measures to save the planet. Factories leave vast volumes of waste, recyclable materials pollute land and water, and greenhouse gas emission severely affects climate change (Aktas et al., 2018). One of the industrial reasons for such issues is transportation with its wide usage among businesses and serious ecological impact.
Logistics is the part of supply chain management that leaves the most significant carbon footprint, which causes global warming. Today, many companies work on green logistics approaches created to decrease or eliminate the environmental damage of their transport systems. Businesses started to consider the ecological factor while optimizing the delivery speed, costs, and greenhouse gas emissions in their supply chains (Wang et al., 2017). However, there are still many obstacles preventing the successful appliance for environmental-friendly strategies like green logistics. The problems like high taxes, lack of governmental support, the economic instability of regions, and vehicles producers’ unawareness of the severe ecological impact have to be studied and evaluated to find the optimal solutions. This research aims to explore the global experience of green logistics implementation to find the most significant drawbacks and offer to determine a possible solution.
Literature Review
Many peer-reviewed articles and scientific researches discussing green logistics, its issues, optimization, and solutions appeared during the last decade. Economists, ecologists, sociologists, and other scientists examined multiple approaches to establishing green logistics in particular regions or industries. This research literature review includes a description of sources studying the subject based on countries like China and the UK and manufacturers such as pharmacy and packaging. It also contains scientific material about optimization frameworks, issues, and solutions.
European scientists highlight the economic impact of establishing green logistics policies and the environmental benefits of the latter. Zaman and Shamsuddin evaluated businesses ’logistic expenses of 27 European countries to conclude that a profit-oriented approach can increase dangerous fossil fuel energy consumption (Zaman & Shamsuddin, 2017). They offered the European Union to establish green supply chain regulations to keep energy demands, environmental and economic conditions balanced (Zaman & Shamsuddin, 2017). In the UK, the researchers examined the influence of the national scale economic and ecological indicators on logistics strategies. Khan and Qianli studied the relationship between the government’s financial demands and the UK’s green logistics operation performance (Khan & Qianli, 2017). The results showed how the UK’s high taxes and import duties prevent businesses from decreasing the environmental damage of their logistic strategies (Khan & Qianli, 2017). The research containing economic data and policies helps scientists investigate if green logistics can be established at the legislative level.
Asia is the region with a significant logistics role, as many supply chains include shipments from its countries. The study of Khan et al. connected global logistics operations with economic, social, and environmental factors of Asian countries to examine how they promote green supply logistics operations (Khan et al., 2019). Their findings revealed that low transporting regulations are correlated to Asia’s politically unstable regions and lead them to more significant greenhouse gas and carbon emissions, severely affecting the environment and the citizens’ health (Khan et al., 2019). Applying green logistics strategies can help Asian countries improve their life quality and build independent national economics.
China is a crucial country for many businesses, however, not all of these companies offer ecology-friendly transporting solutions, and Chinese legislation does not include particular laws to manage it. An empirical study of the factors that influence the motivation to establish green logistics in China analyzed the companies’ willingness to decrease their environmental damage (Li et al., 2019). Based on the data collected, Li et al. (2019) state that “a policy system could correct and supplement market failures; it is crucial to improving regulatory efficiency, promoting social welfare, and enhancing corporate green logistics” (p. 8). Asian countries’ experience shows the importance of governmental regulation and promotion for green logistics to take care of people’s health and force global businesses to consider the environmental factor the same way they value the profit.
BRICS contains the developing economies, therefore the way how greenhouse logistics affect them can help the scientists to build effective ecology-friendly approaches for most of the countries. Aldakhil et al. (2018) claim that “green logistics are important for achieving environmental sustainability agenda by improving socioeconomic and environmental factors, which is imperative for go for-green business in BRICS countries” (p. 866). Russia is one of the association representatives and has unique transportation demands as the world’s largest country. Version et al. examined the Russian economy’s expenses of decreasing the emissions’ damage from various vehicles and concluded that green solutions would cost less as they offer long-term solutions for environmental problems (Verstina et al., 2018). Developing countries can apply green logistics to their economies to speed up growth without severe consequences.
Transportation is essential for many industries, and its ecology-friendly optimization is the subject of researches attempting to discover convenient practices for most businesses. Pharmacy is the sector examined by the Turkish scientists who offered the theory of planned behavior to be applied for employees as the main strategy to implement green logistics into pharmaceutical companies (Arslan & Şar, 2018). They measured managers’ attitudes towards environmental issues, product costs, transportation, storage, and order expenses. Arslan and Şar (2018) concluded that “If the ecological intention of managers can be increased, the behavior of the green logistic of them will be increased by 52%” (p. 1011). The employees’ awareness of the company’s ecological impact can help the businesses generate ecologically sound strategies.
The greenhouse gas emissions related to transportation can be decreased by implementing alternatives for the industry important worldwide, like packaging. Chaoying and Nie investigated how the packaging industry can produce more ecology-friendly products and optimize their logistics by changing the design of their goods (Chaoying & Nie, 2014). The scientists offered approaches to help the companies make less transportation by making compact commodities and considering the environmental factor at all production stages (Chaoying & Nie, 2014). Moreover, the compound of packaging products can also be revised to make the goods reusable and recycling.
Batch processing industries require transportation on multiple stages of their production; therefore, green logistics can vastly improve the ecological conditions worldwide if implemented in such manufactures. El-Berishy and Scholz-Reiter (2016) state that “within the globalized market, greening the batch supply chain through an environmentally friendly logistics network design guarantees competitive advantages and meets the customers’ expectations and social responsibilities requirements” (p.8). Their research examined two case studies to generate the model of optimal costs and delivery velocities based on green logistics (El-Berishy & Scholz-Reiter, 2016). The transportation expenses can be counted into the end price of a product, which consumers will buy if they know that its manufacturing is ecology-friendly.
Green logistics can solve environmental problems humanity experiences today, such as climate change consequent from carbon emission and air pollution. Scientists study industrial cases, examine the alternatives to damaging substances, and evaluate different optimization strategies to find the solution for worldwide sustainable development. For example, Hilpert, Kranz, and Schumann developed an artifact that tracks greenhouse gas emissions for analysis and information diffusion to effectively implement green logistic strategies (Hilpert et al., 2013). Moreover, transportation providers should offer approaches that assist the industries in decreasing ecological damage. Wang et al. (2017) claim that “environmental issues are known to impact numerous logistical decisions throughout the supply chain, such as determining locations, sourcing raw materials, selecting modal segments, and planning of transport” (p. 3). The application of green transportation strategies depends on manufacturers’ locations, policies, and transitional requirements of goods. The research of Sbihi and Eglise determined how routing, reverse logistics, and distribution demands define the carbon footprints of businesses (Sbihi & Eglese, 2010). Such studies are based on real companies’ experiences and show that many factors influence their ecological solutions.
Green practices can go beyond logistics and make businesses implement waste management and materials recovery strategies to decrease the damage. The study of Hazen et al. (2011) suggests that “consumers view products made with recycled materials to be of similar quality to that of commensurate new products” (p.382). Peer-reviewed articles disclose that environmental problems’ social and political perception affects appliance effectiveness for strategies like green logistics. Klumpp used the Jevons paradox theorems to analyze why alternative transporting approaches failed and discovered that public investment in low-emission transport could encourage society to act and decrease ecological damage (Klumpp, 2016). Green logistics programs face obstacles in governance, routing design, transportation requirements, social awareness, and product costs. Aktas et al. offer multiple solutions, such as legislative changes, investment programs, route scheduling optimization, and supportive associations’ establishment to reach sustainable development (Aktas et al., 2018). Green logistics include valuable strategies that can decrease people’s ecological impact without affecting the world’s economic growth.
Conclusion
The green logistics issues have been widely discussed in peer-reviewed articles, and scientists have already examined research data from many studies. However, gaps in the literature still exist and need to be filled for crafting the optimal solution for the environmental problem. Firstly, there is no peer-reviewed information about the legislative systems that can establish policies forcing businesses to consider green transportation practices. Secondly, the lack of case studies about the world’s biggest supply chains sustainability solution leads to smaller companies making unnecessary mistakes in pursuing ecological decisions. Lastly, most of the green logistics studies examine the environmental harm in general, and only a few research papers are dedicated to certain damaging factors like carbon emission.
Gaps in literature align this research’s idea by limiting the possible approaches that could be offered to try by different companies worldwide. The lack of data about policymaking and regulation for such solutions is a considerable barrier in choosing the optimal strategy. Klumpp (2016) claims that “adding to the hurdles of green logistics are the problems of short-term political programs and decisions versus long-term business investments in transportation and logistics” (p. 1). Further research has to include the business owners’ view of the issues and their perception of ecological damage and economic demands that require them to remain balanced.
References
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