Sustainable Agro-Food Supply Chain in E-Commerce: Towards the Circular Economy

Dhirendra Prajapati, Fuli Zhou, Ashish Dwivedi, Tripti Singh, Lakshay Lakshay and Saurabh Pratap
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Dhirendra Prajapati: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Design and Manufacturing, Jabalpur 452005, India
Fuli Zhou: School of Economics and Management, Zhengzhou University of Light Industry, Zhengzhou 450000, China
Ashish Dwivedi: Jindal Global Business School, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat 131029, India
Tripti Singh: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Design and Manufacturing, Jabalpur 452005, India
Lakshay Lakshay: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi 221005, India
Saurabh Pratap: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi 221005, India

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 14, 1-19

Abstract: The continuous decline in the sustainable agro-food supply chain (AFSC) towards a Circular Economy (CE) has become a matter of great concern for the key stakeholders, including government organizations, businesses, end-users, and farmers. In line with this, the main purpose of this study is to develop a sustainable food Supply Chain Network (SCN). The SCN enables the collection of agro-food grains from different farmers’ locations and delivers the same to food processing units. To design an efficient and effective sustainable pickup and delivery network, a Mixed-Integer Non-Linear Programming (MINLP) mathematical model is formulated. The proposed model achieves the sustainability goal by minimizing the collection costs. The developed MINLP model is solved by using an exact optimization approach in LINGO 18 software. Further, to test the efficacy of the developed model, various computational experiments are performed, varying from small to large size data. The results of these experiments reflect that our model can support businesses in designing an efficient and effective sustainable pickup and delivery network. Lastly, it has been shown that innovative packaging materials can help to minimize the wastage of food.

Keywords: circular economy (CE); e-commerce supply chain; cost factor innovative food packaging materials; environmental sustainability; exact optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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