Sustainable Supply Chain Management in Urban Logistics - Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems - page 34

4 Conclusion
Sustainable SCM constitutes, in our opinion, an important investigation key for
each stakeholder of the supply chain. This seems to be more and more urgent since
the environment as a whole follows such variations that the actors (enterprises,
public entities, customers, retailers, consumers, etc.) have to change their practices
in order to improve, or at least to stabilise, the industrial model established in the
XIXth century. The SuSCM approaches constitute an important support to this
improvement.
The case study shows that a city logistics system can be based on a SuSCM
approach. The three dimensions (economical, environmental and social/societal)
are observed and strongly connected. Moreover, the social/societal dimension has
an important impact on economic and on environmental aspects. We observe
however that even when a project is developed with environmental goals, the
economic dimension is primordial to assure its continuity. In this sense, the
responsible figure of Cityporto's services affirms that without money, the activity
cannot sustain. Finally, it is important to observe the impacts of the current eco-
nomic crisis to the economic rentability in current logistics schemas. In conse-
quence, the environmental and social/societal dimensions will be conditioned by
the economic one, although they must remain fundamental for Sustainable SCM as
a whole.
Acknowledgments The author thanks Jesus Gonzalez-Feliu, from Laboratoire d'Economie des
Transports, for his help and valuable comments in the preparation of this chapter.
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