Sustainable Supply Chain Management in Urban Logistics - Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems - page 22

Demeter Club and the French Agency of the Energy (ADEME) have validated 10
categories of ''good practices'' for a better respect of the environment. 2 Sustain-
able transportation and logistics needs to refer to the concept of sustainable
development (Rio of Janeiro summit 1992). Its practice needs to be focused in a
generational horizon (more then 25 years) and to join three consubstantial ele-
ments, which are respectively related to the economical, the environmental and the
social spheres of the sustainable development. However, and as stated in Routhier
et al. ( 2009 ), although some fields like building and manufacturing industries and
energy production are doing quite well, there are still som ''bas elements'', from
which freight transport and urban logistics energy management.
Before the 1980s, the management of freight flows for urban supples did not
had an important impact to road congestion and air pollution in urban areas.
Moreover, public authorities' actions related to logistics and freight transportation
policy and planning in urban contexts were limited to specific measures to deal
with emergencies (Gonzalez-Feliu and Morana 2010 ). With urban traffic
increasing, and the raise of congestion not only in big but also in medium cities,
some public administrations have affronted the problematic of urban freight dis-
tribution, that was managed traditionally only by the transportation carriers.
Between the 1990s and the beginning of the twenty first century, with the con-
tribution of public administrations and other support funds, several studies and
pilot tests have been made to learn how to organise urban freight distribution in
order to decrease traffic and pollution derived from this transportation sector. Most
of these studies are oriented to support public authorities in decisions related to
urban freight transportation planning. However, and since the urban logistics are
mainly related to the last mile of classical supply chains, the enterprise's strategies
have to be confronted to the collective interests related to urban freight trans-
portation and logistics operations.
This chapter aims to identify and present the relations between the enterprise's
interests and the public authorities' goals through collaborative sustainable urban
logistics systems. The chapter is organized as follows. First, the chapter presents
the main principles of Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SuSCM) and
relates them to urban logistics through a synthetic literature review. Then, such
principles are illustrated by their practice at Cityporto, a sustainable urban freight
distribution system in Padua, Italy. This experience shows however that, although
this project incorporates practices that can be considered as part of a SuSCM
approach, the global reflection is only at its beginnings.

2 Information retrieved from Les Echos Magazine professional magazine, of 2009/03/24, p. 30.
We thus find (1) In advance of the transport phase (upstream), design products differently, (2)
Reorganize the company's production and purchasing, (3) Organize your logistics and transport
better, (4) Combat unnecessary miles and speeds, (5) Reduce consumption of the means of
transport, (6) Consolidate transport operations so as to reduce unitary costs and emissions, (7)
Mutualize and cooperate between carriers and providers, (8) Optimize your storage and

distribution platforms, (9) Improve the later links in your distribution chain, and (10)

Communicate in order to lend value to pioneering approaches.