The development of sustainable transportation for e-grocery

Abstract

Growing demand for organic food products requires to rethink the current supply chain approaches for e-grocery. The shifting trend for e-commerce is requiring products to be delivered in small quantities, to multiple delivery points, which causes negative effect from sustainability perspective. The distribution of goods in urban areas, together with private traffics flow, are among the main sources of energy consumption, air pollution and noise. Thus, the goal of the research is to conduct a literature review on development of sustainable transportation for e-grocery. The literature analysis indicated that the majority of vehicle routing approaches are design for general transportation problems, not specifically related to e-grocery. Also, the changing economic trends related to growing urbanization levels and traffic congestions are not taken into consideration. Thus, the authors of the publication indicate the need to develop dynamic routing algorithms for autonomous vehicles to cope with the traffic congestions and maintain higher sustainability levels from social, economic, and environmental perspectives.