Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 5. Green Logistics Practices Matrix
Strategic
Tactical
Operational
Transportation
• Change of truck fleets
• Standardization of truck sizes
• Creation of distribution centers
• Sustainable carrier selection
• Palletization
• Freight consolidation
• Reuse of pallets and containers
• Modal choice
• Carbon footprint assessment
• Clean vehicles
• Fuel efficiency
• Load optimization
Warehousing
• Automatic Warehousing Systems
• Facility design and construction
• Selection of different equipment
• Reconditioning and reuse of pal-
lets and containers
• Disposition of products
• Clean material handling equip-
ment
• Fuel efficiency
• Energy efficiency
• Process optimization
• Minimization of inventories
• On-site recycling
Value added Services
• Carbon footprint assessment
• Green customer criteria gather-
ing
• Introduction of tracking and trac-
ing systems
• Environmental certifications
• Pallet and container pooling
systems
• Use of different packaging tech-
nologies and materials to reduce
contamination
• Environmental footprint reports
• Use of tracking and tracing
systems to improve operations
performance
low values of the barriers can be assumed
which are dominated by high values of the
drivers.
green logistics practices in emerging markets, in
comparison with highly developed markets, is
not widely diffused so far, are leading to the fol-
lowing question addressed in the next part: how
do emerging market characteristics influence the
implementation of green logistics system and
practices?
•
In case of low values of the drivers and
high values of the barriers like implemen-
tation cost and lack of manager awareness,
companies will probably not implement
environmental practices in a systematical
way. In this case, an implementation of
green practices could just be considered as
a by-product of activities focused on effi-
ciency issues and cost reduction (e.g. load
optimization and fuel efficiency).
GREEN LOGISTICS IN EMERGING
MARKETS: CHARACTERISTICS,
IMPACT, AND CASES
The following section addresses the likely im-
pact of emerging market characteristics on the
implementation of green logistics systems. It also
describes two cases of successfully implemented
green logistics practices: BP Colombia and the
Mexican Green Supply Chain Program (MGSCP).
While a concrete relation between values of
factors and practices is in general difficult to prove,
the above mentioned drivers and barriers identified
in literature indicate the existence of differences
concerning the implementation of green logistics
between countries and regions, as factors like
environmental legislation and awareness levels
differ on higher aggregated levels of economic
systems than the company level.
The observations that differences of economic
meta-systems have an impact on the implementa-
tion of green logistics and that the application of
The Impact of Emerging
Market Characteristics on the
Implementation of Green Logistics
The implementation of green logistics must over-
come several general barriers, which, as mentioned
