**4. Role of supply chains and logistics in sustainability**

Logistics has become the backbone of business globally. Today, more than ever, the Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated how the world desperately depends on the movement of goods with container prices growing tenfold from 2019 to 2021. Despite the global disruptions, supply chains have shown resilience in moving what needs to be moved. According to UNCTAD [13], the world ship carrying capacity reached 2.1 billion dead-weight tonnes (dwt) after increasing by 81 million dwt by January 2021. The classical contribution by Converse [14] that recognises logistics as the other half of marketing simply emphasises the position the function occupies in the broader business environment. A supply chain consists of many players (local or international) that work together to create value in an arrangement sometimes referred to as value chains. **Figure 1** below shows a graphical representation of the traditional logistics and value chain activities by Porter [15], made up of primary and

#### **Figure 1.**

*Logistics and value chain activities. Source: Porter [15].*

secondary activities. Primary activities that involve inbound logistics, operations, and outbound logistics among others depend a lot on movement of raw materials, semi-finished, finished goods, services, information, and financial resources between the different players using different modes. Most of the inefficiencies and waste occur when the coordination of these activities fails. For example, wrong forecasts may lead to bullwhip effects creating huge disruptions in supply chains, building up inventory or necessitating expedited shipments. Two cases that are cited [16] of the "Norwegian salmon" and "Rolls Royce wheels" where these high-end products (despite efforts to make their production environmentally friendly), reverse all these gains through increased movement for purposes of "value addition". In the case of the salmon, it goes to China from Europe for processing only to be shipped back to the west for consumption. This increases the carbon footprint of these products, which unfortunately, is not often captured as a cost in supply chains. Equally, there are still controversies around net benefits on the use of electric cars when the industries that produce them and the cars themselves are still powered by fossil fuels generated energy.

In responding to environmental concerns businesses have adopted concepts such as green logistics and circular economy [17]. The green concept forces businesses to infuse sustainability in every decision made—that holistic optimisation in supply chains should go beyond operational and profit efficiencies but also consider environmental and societal impacts with a view to reduce waste at source. On the other hand, the circular economy concept is driven by the idea that waste can be fed back into the system to harness its value as long as it is possible to do so [18]. In other words, business activities can be arranged in a way that one's waste serves as an input for another's production. Materials are re-used until they can no longer be useful, thereby delaying their disposal. To that extent, ecosystem- models like business clustering have made this possible. Some traditional industries have incorporated partial recycling simply as a cost saving measure without being concerned with sustainability - for example, steel production uses scrap iron as a component (often 15–25%) of refined steel finished products. By contrast Just in Time (JIT) has led to clustering of component industries around major manufactures - e.g., in the European automotive industry.
