From Closed-Loop to Sustainable Supply Chains: The WEEE case

The primary objective of closed-loop supply chains (CLSC) is to reap the maximum economic benefit from end-of-use products. Nevertheless, literature within this stream of research advocates that closing the loop helps to mitigate the undesirable footprint of supply chains. In this paper we assess the magnitude of such environmental gains for Electric and Electronic Equipments (EEE), based on a single environmental metric of Cumulative Energy Demand. We detail our analysis for the different phases of the CLSC, i.e. manufacturing, usage, transportation and end-of-life activities. According to our literature review, within the same group of EEE, results greatly vary. Furthermore, based on the environmental hot-spots, we propose extensions of the existing CLSC models to incorporate the CED.