Role and relevance of logistics to corporate environmentalism

Abstract

IntroductionEcology is concerned with the relationships of living things and their physical environments. These relationships are frequently studied in the context of an ecosystem, which is a total ecological community which considers both living and non-living factors of its environment as a unit [1]. The interaction of living and non-living elements means that ecosystems are extremely complex and interrelated. There are a multitude of trade-offs in ecosystems: something done to an ecosystem in one place affects the entire system. As a result, it is virtually impossible to do something that does not have an effect somewhere else [1].The physical or natural environment contains, among other things, air, water and land, without which ecosystems as we know them would not exist. Society is both a participant in, and an exploiter of, our physical environment. Its use of the physical environment's elements, energy and natural resources to produce economic goods and services can, and frequently does, upset the fragile balance of sensitive ecosystems [2].Historically, the environment's ability to dilute excessive waste discharge or recover from excessive resource depletion was rarely questioned. However, beginning in the 1960s, consumers, businesses and governments began to recognize, and respond to, problems involving damage to the physical environment caused by excessive waste disposal and overutilization of resources. This damage alters the quality of the physical environment and places pressure on the ecosystem to make adaptive changes.Today, public alarm over resource depletion, waste disposal, congestion and pollution has intensified societal demands for government and business to give greater priority to managing these and other environmental issues. The USA, for instance, has about 5 per cent of the world's population, but generates over 50 per cent of the world's refuse [3]. As a result, a growing number of jurisdictions have set up mandatory recycling programmes, which generally require certain kinds of waste (e.g. plastic bottles, tin cans) to be separated from other kinds.

Re‐evaluating green marketing strategy: a stakeholder perspective

“…In addition, because size can make companies more sensitive to damage to their reputation (Waddock and Graves, 1997), firm size has also been used as a proxy for "political visibility" (Dasgupta et al, 1997). Furthermore, firm size has often been associated with discretionary disclosures practices (see Gray et al, 1995), and empirical research has revealed significant relationships between firm size and a firm's proactive environmental policies (Murphy et al, 1995;Stanwick and Stanwick, 1998). However, because larger firms are not only more visible, but also have more resources to allocate to environmental issues (Bowen, 2000), these resources could explain a firm's proactive behavior with respect to environmental issues.…”

Developing green supply chain management taxonomy-based decision support system

“…The Carter and colleagues set uses one main dataset to examine environmental purchasing issues Carter, Ellram, and Ready 1998;Jennings 2002, 2004), while the Murphy and colleagues set focuses on green logistics issues (Murphy, Poist, and Braunschwieg 1994, 1995Poist 2000, 2003). Other notable studies include research examining green logistics (Autry, Daugherty, and Richey 2001;Ciliberti, Pontrandolfo, and Scozzi 2008;Mishra, Kumar, and Chan 2012); supplier performance and selection (Zhu and Geng 2001;Awasthi, Chauhan, and Goyal 2010); or drivers and benefits of environmental management (Yang et al 2010;Blome, Hollos, and Paulraj 2013).…”

Environmental practices as offerings and requirements on the logistics market

“…Green logistics is a wide area [34], and over the years, the focus has expanded from more technology-driven improvements of the transportation system and modal split towards city logistics (see for example [3]), reverse logistics [5,23,57], logistics in corporate environmental strategies [2,38,68], and green supply chain management (GSCM) [51,56,62].…”