Environmental and economic assessment of fresh fruit supply chain through value chain analysis. A case study in chestnuts industry

In recent years, both researches and practitioners have devoted attention to environmental sustainability of supply chain (SC), while firms have modified their marketing strategies highlighting green practices in productive and logistic processes among the features of their products. These behaviours move firms to require to their suppliers the adoption of green measures and practices to reduce environmental impacts within the entire SC. This paper presents the results of an exploratory case-based research on the SC of fresh chestnuts aimed to integrate environmental concepts in the value chain approach, with a concurrent evaluation of sustainability improvements and their economic impact. Within the value chain configuration, environmental KPIs are defined for the specific case study and a logistic environmental model is developed. Within the model, an evaluation of carbon footprint for this SC is proposed, along with its possible improvements. Results include the analysis of different improvement scenarios and their comparison.