Waste Reduction for Green Service Supply Chain—the Case Study of a Payment Service Provider in Iran

Ali Aghazadeh Ardebili, Elio Padoano and Najmeh Rahmani
Additional contact information
Ali Aghazadeh Ardebili: Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Trieste, 34127 Trieste, Italy
Elio Padoano: Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Trieste, 34127 Trieste, Italy
Najmeh Rahmani: Department of Research & Planning, Statistics and planning office, SEP Co., Tehran, Iran

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 5, 1-22

Abstract: Analyzing and designing how service is provided to the customer is crucial for sustainable supply chains in services. In this respect, there can be barriers to applying sustainable improvements due to regulations, practices and customer culture. This study is focused on finding the waste produced by the service of one of the biggest payment service provider (PSP) companies in Iran and how to meet the essential needs of the sustainable supply chain. It has been observed that using thermal papers as a biohazardous material causes environmental problems and even it is hazardous to mix them with normal paper waste in the recycling process. Moreover, preventive maintenance of the thermal printers itself causes a huge number of unnecessary shuttles between the customers and service suppliers, which represents a source of CO 2 emission, traffic—especially in the capital—and high maintenance costs for the company. Three main alternatives to the thermal paper receipt were analyzed and ranked by means of a TOPSIS (Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) model, which employed the sustainability pillars and the technical point of view as evaluation criteria. The priorities against the set of criteria were obtained by means of surveys, which targeted a sample of customers and a pool of experts. The results highlighted that customers’ habits and legislation are the most important barriers to the transition to a more sustainable service.

Keywords: Sustainable supply chain; green service; payment service provider; thermal paper; waste reduction; multi criteria decision making; TOPSIS; sustainable consumption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/5/1833/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/5/1833/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:5:p:1833-:d:326497

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().