Scenario analysis for food waste recovery in logistic distribution

The present paper builds upon the study by Bottani et al. (2018). This previous work developed a routing and location (R&L) model under Microsoft Excel™ to determine the best location of a set of depots to collect the wasted food from the retailers in the Emilia-Romagna region (Italy) and to compute the cost of the resulting reverse logistics channel. The model was used to investigate different scenarios for the collection of wasted food and the results have shown that the minimum cost of collecting the food waste totals 123.68 €/ton and can be reached by limiting the recovery activities to 749 selected retail stores of the region. Exploiting the same R&L model, in this study we investigate four different configurations for the reverse logistics network of food waste. In general, the rationale behind these configurations is that to be cost effective, the food waste collection should primarily target the hypermarkets, as the retail stores that discard the highest quantity of food. Nonetheless, the number of retail stores considered can vary across the scenarios, with the purpose of identifying the minimum cost configuration. Results of this paper complement the findings of the previous research and allow deriving further useful considerations about the profitability of a reverse logistics channel for food waste recovery in the Emilia-Romagna region.