Dear Colleagues,

Sustainability will publish a Special Issue focusing on relationships among Reverse Logistics and Urban Logistics and how both disciplines can jointly contribute in dealing with some issues currently affecting our cities, such as traffic congestion, noise, air pollution, and safety. Despite the growing interest shown in both logistics areas and their relevance for companies and consumers, reverse logistics and urban logistics are two concepts that are still somewhat unknown and, above all, treated as being relatively separate. However, certain areas exist wherein the two disciplines converge and that may therefore represent opportunities for collaboration, for example, in the proper treatment and management of urban waste, and the efficient management of commercial refunds and returns. In addition, other key issues, such as land use, city typology, infrastructures, and stakeholders’ engagement should be further analyzed in order to keep making progress in the description of links between both areas.

Recently, Rubio et al. (2019) described some relevant issues on this regard. Firstly, there are still significant challenges requiring further research, such as new opportunities related to product returns and different recovery options, development and implementation of specific strategies for selling recovered products, and issues related with a more specific legislation to be applied to product returns. Secondly, key aspects on urban logistics should be addressed in the near future, such as, for example: logistics planning in cities, collaboration among stakeholders, new collaborative ways of exchanging data and information, and the development of research areas related to, for example, energy efficiency, reducing noise and atmospheric pollution, and increasing the safety and protection of people and goods, among others.

The goal of this Special Issue is to compile state-of-the art research spanning modeling, theory, empirical studies, applications, and case studies on this topic. We seek contributions that are rigorously executed, clearly and succinctly written, addressing contemporary challenges.

References

Rubio, S., Jiménez-Parra, B., Chamorro-Mera, A., Miranda, F. J. Reverse Logistics and Urban Logistics: Making a Link. Sustainability 2019, 11, 5684; doi:10.3390/su11205684.

Dr. Sergio Rubio
Dr. Beatriz Jiménez-Parra
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• reverse logistics
• urban logistics
• freight transport
• waste management
• commercial returns
• stakeholders’ engagement
• urban infrastructures