Green Logistics

Logistics involves the movement, storage and handling of products as they travel from farms, factories and ports to the shops. These activities are essential in economic terms, but can have a damaging effect on the environment. Freight transport in particular is a significant source of air pollution, carbon dioxide emissions, accidents, noise and vibration. This research programme will examine a range of ways of reducing its environmental impact, many of which will also cut the cost of distribution. It will begin by reviewing previous research on this subject in the UK and other countries. It will also try to forecast how much worse the environmental effects of logistics will become if nothing new is done to address the problem.The main part of the programme will comprise a series of separate, but inter-linked, modules focusing on measures that companies can adopt to make their logistical operations more 'green'. Some of the measures would be introduced at a high level and require changes to the way that production and distribution is structured. Others would affect day-to-day operations by, for example, optimising the route a vehicle follows when making deliveries. We will use a framework which shows how all these measures could work in combination to make logistics more sustainable in both economic and environmental terms. It can also help to prioritise those measures that are likely to yield the greatest net benefit.Specific modules will look at ways of improving the use of lorries, rescheduling deliveries to avoid peak periods and integrating different modes of transport (road, rail, sea and air). Within towns and cities opportunities exist for reducing the negative environmental effects of various developments, such as the rise of internet shopping and home delivery leading to growing use of small vans. Increasing attention is also being paid to the need to recycle and recover products at the end of their life and thereby reduce the quantity of resources that ends up in waste tips. It is important to find sustainable ways of transporting, storing and processing waste product. To achieve greater sustainability in logistics we must improve our understanding of the trade-offs between economic and environmental objectives and grasp opportunities created by new technologies. These include such things as the tagging of products with microchips, the satellite tracking of vehicles and buying and selling of freight transport services on the internet. Over the four year programme we will identify and evaluate a range of measures and technologies with the assistance of a group of partner companies which are heavily involved in various aspects of logistics. Different forms of research will be used, including postal surveys, interviews with managers, 'focus group' discussions, pilot projects and computer modelling. Information gained by these means will be accessible to researchers on a website. The programme will improve our technical capability to collect and analyse information about 'green logistics'. It will also provide answers to some of the critical questions facing companies and governments that wish to make the distribution of goods more economically and environmentally sustainable.