A review of sustainable solutions in urban logistics in Europe

Abstract

Despite multiple attempts to lower emissions from supply chains and logistics activities, the level of reduction in environmental pressure is far from reaching a level of decarbonisation, low pollution and renewable resources that we could call sustainable. Impactful logistics solutions were reasonably developed and, in 2023, began to make a difference on the market, but true success stories of market upscale with high beneficial impacts and satisfactory profit margins can only be found for limited logistics operations, such as electric vans and locker boxes for last mile logistics, and few supply chains such as sustainable forestry or biodegradable plastics. The global picture of all supply chains of all products and services lacks good examples in most domains, and some sectors and branches such as maritime freight are at a too early stage, or did not start at all. This paper describes how the authors wanted to identify the most promising sustainable solutions, and test how important and valuable their contributions are in business contexts. The paper describes how the authors reassessed the effects and results of 12 European research projects and over 200 business innovations in light of the most recent knowledge, using our thoroughly tested evaluation criteria on beneficial impacts for emission reduction, efficiency gains, technical feasibility, supply chain cooperation and others, while exploiting intersubjective reported evidence. The authors identified several key solutions, showing how solutions were established, how they could be further scaled up and how barriers to their market uptake could be overcome. The paper concludes by showing that most sustainable solutions examples were used in the past as practical models for the next investment in innovative businesses.