A decision support system for the environmental assessment of fruit and vegetables packaging and distribution systems

This study introduces a novel decision support system (DSS) framework to model and assess three alternative material-driven logistics networks for secondary packaging systems (SPSs) in the fruit and vegetable supply chain. These SPSs cover reusable plastic containers (RPCs), single-use plastic containers (SPCs), and corrugated cardboard boxes (CCBs). By integrating primary data from enterprise resource planning systems with Geographic Information Systems, the DSS offers high-resolution insights into transportation flows, payloads, and environmental emissions. The framework captures key lifecycle stages of packaging and distribution systems, from the production and use to end-of-life management, enabling a robust comparative analysis of environmental performance. The proposed tool further assists the supply chain's stakeholders in preparing environmental reports that account for the impacts generated by their annual logistics flows and enables the forecasting of future impacts by incorporating estimated flows. Applied to a large-scale logistics network of an Italian retailer, the DSS revealed significant trade-offs between reusable and single-use SPSs. The findings underscore the importance of data-driven tools for optimizing sustainability in food supply chain logistics and suggest avenues for future research to enhance the scalability and applicability of DSS frameworks in complex supply chains.