Green Logistics in Italy: New challenge for sustainable development

Balancing economic and environmental performance has become increasingly important for organizations facing competitive, regulatory, and community pressures (Shultz and Holbrook, 1999). The term sustainability has begun to appear in the literature of business disciplines and companies also are starting to adopt this (Aref et al. 2005; Sarkis, 2002; Hill, 2001; Norman and MacDonald, 2004; Carter, 2008).The term logistics within the field of supply chain management has been widely defined (Bowersox, 1986; Christopher, 1998; Signori, 2004; Frankel et all, 2008. Furthermore, scholars studied logistics as an environmental and social issue, from the development of environmental logistics strategies (Murphy et al., 1996) to the improvement of fuel efficiency and emissions reduction from transportation equipment (McKinnon et al., 1993; Stock, 1978) including research about safety in motor carrier, rail, and airline industries (Weener and Wheeler, 1992; Crum et al., 1995; Cantor et al., 2006).It is well known that freight transport increases the amount of pollution, traffic congestion, gas emissions and energy consumption. However, Poist (1989) maintains that logistics is especially well positioned to contribute to environmental and ecological control in terms of packaging issues, pollution control, and energy and resource conservation (Murphy, 1996; Stock, 1998, Siviero 2005). Green logistics is largely studied in the literature in the international context; yet very little research exists to know better what the role of green logistics in sustainable issues in Italy.This article analyzes the state of art of green logistics in Italy, which still constitutes an unexplored field. We developed a conceptual paper in which we defined green logistics as the sum of three aspects: reverse logistics, with particular regards to recycling, source reduction, reuse of materials, waste disposal, refurbishing, repair and remanufacturing (Jahre, 1995; Stock, 1998; Russo, 2008); city logistics in order to understand how the razionalization of urban freight transport is essential for sustainable economic growth (Taniguchi, Van der Heijden, 2000; Maggi 2003) and the intelligent distribution (Onofri,1997; Ottimo and Vona, 2001), in which the selection of transport modes with low impact, intermodality and freight villages have been considered.To summarize, this lack of consideration of green logistics in Italy lead to the following research questions:1. What are the main pillars of green Logistics in Italy?2. What are the drivers of Green Logistics in Italy?3. What is the link between Green Logistics and sustainability in Italy?In Italy we noticed that the most effective approach is top-down, where green practices are imposed by norms/law or restriction. However, there are a few cases where the willingness to be greener comes from the single firm, where the entrepreneurial culture has been changing and turning into a more sustainable way; not just for following a government restriction or norm but from inside the company or from a customer request.Reverse logistics from the environmental perspective supports environmentally sound practices such as recycling, remanufacturing, reuse and recall. The basic principle is that the lengthening of a product’s or material’s life typically has environmental benefits. City logistics as well as the Intelligent Distribution System are still in an experimental phase of environmental policies of Italy except for a few cases. Further improvements can be done: the possible solutions can be onerous and radical, such as night urban freight transport, UDC (Urban Distribution Centre), pick up and delivery points, new freight transport systems; or less onerous such as time regulations (loading time/ access time), controlling transport load factors, parking fees, night deliveries, vehicle weight and size regulations, road pricing (Taniguchi, 2000). This article analyzes the state of art of green logistics in Italy, which still constitutes an unexplored field. Thus we defined green logistics as the sum of three aspects linked with logistics: reverse logistics, city logistics and intelligent distribution.