I gave the academic keynote address to the 29th International Symposium on Logistics which this year was hosted by the Wiesbaden Business School in the Hesse region of Germany.   The main theme of the event was ‘embedding circularity in supply chains‘.  This gave me the opportunity to explore the role of circularity in ‘climate logistics’.  This can take many forms: e.g.

- reducing the demand for freight transport or at least constraining its future growth

- making freight flows more balanced and hence reducing the empty running of freight vehicles

- recycling of waste materials in the production of low carbon fuels for freight transport

- expansion of reverse logistics operations for re-use, recycling and remanufacturing, all of which can significantly cut GHG emissions

- logistical support for carbon sequestration – what I called ‘existential circularity’ given the need to remove vast amounts of CO₂ from the atmosphere to achieve Net Zero targets.

I discussed all these processes in a presentation entitled ‘Circularity in Climate Logistics’. It can be downloaded here.

Symposium programme

Professor Kulwant Pawar of Nottingham University

Founder and Chairman and ISL opening the event

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