Economic evaluation of scenarios of food waste recovery in reverse logistics

The present paper builds upon the study by Bottani et al. (2018a). This previous work developed a routing and location (R&L) model under Microsoft Excel™ to compute the cost of the resulting reverse logistics channel. Exploiting the same R&L model, in the study developed by Bottani et al. (2018b), the authors investigated four different configurations for the reverse logistics network of food waste. This study tries to explore additional scenarios for the efficient functioning of the reverse logistics channel. In particular, constraints on the maximum number of retail stores (RSs) that can be visited per day if only one truck would be available to retrieve the wasted food from the RSs are added. The results provided in this study are compared with those resulting from the previous papers developed by the same authors. In particular, in the outcomes of this study, the number of RSs visited daily is significantly lower; moreover, the total cost of the reverse logistics channel increases progressively with the decrease in the number of RSs. Results of this paper complement the findings of the previous researches and allow deriving further useful considerations about the profitability of a reverse logistics channel for food waste recovery in the Emilia-Romagna region. In addition, a similar evaluation can be easily extended to different regions or states.