Sustainable City Logistics Practices for Goods and Waste

Academics and practitioners in Europe and elsewhere have attempted to pinpoint the key role of the urban freight transport and identify potential sustainable solutions within the trend of increasing cities’ size.

In this framework, this chapter reviews the City Logistics(CL) models that have been applied in big major European cities, regarding both goods and waste management.

The increasing awareness of the sustainability imperatives from researchers, supply chain managers, policy makers and the society at large has drawn particular attention to effective management of waste, not only regarding the recycling or recovering process but also the transportation systems designed for the return flows.

The purpose of this study is to help understand the management of goods and waste in big cities and the choice among alternative integrated intermodal transport solutions, particularly with use of rail freight in place of trucks domination. In this respect, the results of the application of an alternative model applied for the transport of waste in a suburb of the Metropolitan Athens, Greece are presented and in addition a taxonomy of the reviewed CL models in big cities is conducted.

It highlights the need for further concerted research efforts in this field, within integrated supply chain approach, for revealing and evaluating future research possibilities for new sustainable practices.

Keywords: City Logistics (CL), Municipal Solid Wastes Management (MSWM), Freight Transport and Distribution City Centers (FTDCC).