Reverse Logistics as a Sustainable Supply Chain Practice for the Fashion Industry: An Analysis of Drivers and the Brazilian Case

Abstract

In the face of environmental and social demands, companies have turned their focus to solutions that minimize environmental impacts and, at the same time, are economically and socially sustainable. In the fashion industry, in order to achieve a sustainable supply chain management (SSCM), among other initiatives, companies have to consider the implementation of used apparel collection programs, in other words, reverse logistics (RL) practice. In this matter, the objective of this study is to identify the most important drivers for RL development and to investigate the level of importance of each selected driver for the Brazilian apparel industry sector. First, international peer-reviewed publications on RL were considered to identify the drivers that allowed the design of a questionnaire to facilitate data collection. Second, with a prior list of 15 drivers, an empirical research was conducted involving three Brazilian textile companies to validate these drivers. The final list included nine influential factors. Subsequently, a Brazilian RL expert was consulted to analyze them. Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) approach was used to obtain the RL driver priority ranking. The main contribution of this research includes the fact that the most influential drivers for RL practice are policy- and economic-related issues, for the apparel textile sector. Due to the lack of specific legislation, Brazil is still in a green awakening process concerning textile end of life product management. Limited gains of scale and technology restrictions are the major impediments for the economic feasibility of RL in the apparel industry sector.