Principles and Design Scenarios for Sustainable Urban Food Logistics

Abstract

Food and nutrition systems are linked to all Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which makes their transition toward social-ecological behavior patterns crucial for an overarching sustainability transformation. The perspective of (urban) logistics is of special interest. It couples the production and consumption physically and virtually. In this context, we shed light on the design of the turnover point of food in urban areas from the supply chain toward consumers and contribute to an overarching systemic perspective toward establishing a sustainable multilevel food system. We describe current patterns in urban food systems and propose several principles for sustainable design of (urban) food systems based on concepts such as (regional) collaboration and food literacy. Using these principles, we provide four design scenarios that concretely imagine future urban food consumption and production patterns titled “slow stock supply service, ” “deliver into the daily walk, ” “central district food depot, ” “super food action place.” With this work we provide a starting for reflecting whether certain combinations of principles actually lead to patterns of daily life that are feasible, acceptable, or desirable. Moreover, we provide an initial qualitative assessment to stimulate further research that explores scenario pathways and incorporates additional indicators regarding the impact on social-ecological. We open up various research questions with regard to the overarching question of how urban food logistics should be designed to be consistent with the SDGs.

Exploring the role of sustainable logistics service providers in multinational supply chain cooperation: An integrated theory-based perspective

“…In the field of sustainable agri-food supply chain management, researchers have adopted a variety of theories and methods, such as literature review, system network design, performance management, and risk models (Ali et al, 2018;Cassani and Gomez-Zavaglia., 2022;Tochtrop et al, 2022;Yontar and Ersoz, 2020). Fan et al (2022), constructed a sustainable logistics performance index using the entropy method.…”

“…Despite the growing interest of businesses in sustainable practices, multinational agri-food cold chains still face challenges in protecting the global environment (Weber et al, 2021). In fact, agri-food systems are relevant to all Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which makes their transition to holistic sustainability (ecological, economic, and social) imperative (Tochtrop et al, 2022). Many large enterprises in developed countries benefit from multinational agri-food supply chains by outsourcing their functions or products to agri-food cold chain suppliers in developing countries (Menke et al, 2021;Fan et al, 2022).…”

“…In actuality, sustainable logistics service providers take into account multiple links (transportation, warehousing, packaging, distribution processing, information management, waste management, etc.) to physically and virtually combine production and consumption links in multinational supply chains (Tochtrop et al, 2022). Therefore, it is vital to maximize the active engagement of sustainable MLSP in the mechanism of sustainable supply chain management.…”

“…to investigate the relationship between sustainable supply chain management strategies and sustainable competitive advantage. Tochtrop et al (2022) created a sustainable urban food supply chain system based on the concepts of regional collaboration and emphasized the logistics sector's participation in the study. Yontar and Ersoz, (2020) determine the parameters that influence sustainable food supply chain management in the food industry through quantitative analysis, and evaluate the performance of supply chain parameters.…”