Circular Economy and Logistics

Dear Colleagues,

Trends in the today’s global market require an adequate planning of sustainable logistics processes in order to achieve successful business strategies. One of the most important and broadly recognized trends is the development of Circular Economy (CE). CE is a model of production and consumption, which involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products as long as possible. It is often identified with the closed loop supply chain (CLSC) which refers to all Forward Logistics operations in the chain (like procurement of materials, production and distribution), as well as the Reverse Logistics operations aimed at collecting and processing of returned (used or unused) products and/or parts of products in order to ensure a social, economic and environmental sustainable recovery through the extraction of values from different types and volumes of goods flows throughout the entire life cycle. However, in addition to the logistics operations implied by the CLSC, CE also involves the so called soft, non-material logistics operations, covered by the term of Business Logistics. Having previous in mind, it is obvious that the efficiency of CE greatly depends on the logistics activities and processes performance. All three segments of logistics support CE by enabling or facilitating one or more main CE area of interest, namely Supply chain management, Circular business models, Digital transformation, Lifecycle management, Resource efficiency, Smart services, Reuse, Disassembly, Remanufacturing and Recycling.

Therefore, this Special Issue, “Circular economy and logistics”, welcomes papers exploring the current and potential effects of the logistics principles, concepts, solutions, technologies, applications, etc. on the development of the CE paradigm.

Topics covered in the Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Investigation of the relationship between CE and logistics;
• Establishment of the circular logistics and circular supply chains;
• Circular supply chain design, coordination, collaboration and integration;
• Logistics activities and processes performance evaluation in the CE;
• Investigation of the relationship between CE and sustainable logistics (in terms of economic, environmental and social sustainability);
• Logistics aspects of the CE application in various industries;
• Investigation of CE in forward, reverse or business logistics;
• Investigation of logistics 4.0 based CE (application of industry 4.0 technologies for performing logistics activities in CE);
• Smart logistics in the era of CE;
• Green logistics in the era of CE;
• City logistics in the era of CE;
• Logistics business model innovation oriented to CE;
• Impact of CE strategies on logistics performance indicators (LPI);
• Supply-chain strategies oriented to CE;
• Impact of logistics policies, strategies and interventions on the CE;
• Impact of regulations on the logistics based CE;
• Investigation of various modes of transport, intermodal transport and transport activities in general in the CE;
• Investigation of packaging activities in the CE;
• Investigation of warehousing activities in the CE;
• Investigation of inventories in the CE;
• Significance of nodes in logistics networks (various types of logistics centers and terminals) for achieving goals of CE.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Violeta Roso
Dr. Snežana Tadić
Dr. Mladen Krstić
Dr. Željko Stević
Dr. Ceren Altuntas Vural
Guest Editors

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