Green Logistics

Green logistics and supply chain management enables a firm to attain its economic targets, minimise environmental hazards, reduce its harmful environmental effects, and enhance the ecological efficiency of the firm and its partners across the supply chain. The unit provides students a comprehensive view of the subject that illustrates the environmental impacts of logistics and the actions that companies can take to deal with them. The unit exposes students to various ways in which freight transport adversely affects the environment, how the impact can be measured and environmental standards can be imposed. In particular, the focus will be on key topics like carbon auditing of supply chains; transferring freight to greener transport modes; reducing the environmental impact of warehousing; improving the energy efficiency of freight transport; making city logistics more environmentally sustainable; and role of government in promoting sustainable logistics. The unit takes a strategic perspective of the logistics where students will appreciate the role of environmental metrics in design of freight transport network, location of nodes, choice of transport mode and creation of carbon-neutral warehousing. With the popularity of smart city, the unit covers the establishment of urban consolidation centres and environmental zone that can improve the sustainability of last mile delivery into cities. The unit updates students with the recent development on green logistics such as distribution by drone, 3D printing, physical Internet and concept of "peak freight" that have the potential to reduce the impact of logistics on environment.