Life cycle inventory of multi-mode transport system for designing green logistics

Abstract

Under the background of fact that global environmental crisis is increasingly serious, green logistics issues are gaining interest. As recognized, a good logistics system should be good not only in economy but also in social benefits. Today, the green logistics has already become the trend of the administrative system of logistics. Since transport is the most important function of the system, it becomes the key to lessen environmental pressures caused by logistics activities. The scope of this paper is to summarize a methodology to assess the environmental impact result from transport. The paper focuses on the three main transport modes, i.e., road, rail, and ship, and obtained the whole life cycle inventory (LCI) of the three modes with five main pollutants (CO2, CO, NOx, NMVOC, and PM). A case study is given to show the difference between the environmental impacts caused by the three transport modes and how the result changes when different ratios of transport modes were chosen. The obtained inventory can provide the data support for the life cycle inventory analysis of the transport parts of logistics. The results may also be employed to complement global emission inventories and by fleet managers as a green logistics decision-making reference.