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Abstract The pharmaceutical industry is increasingly employing reverse logistics practices in their supply chain activities to be more sustainable. However, the absence of voluntary take-back for relocation to needy markets limits the benefits of reverse logistics for sustainability practices in India. Production planning and RL design without taking product category and feedback into consideration are ineffective. Resulting in a pressing need to devise policies by incorporating economic costs, environmental costs, and effective product returns in the model aimed at sustainability through RL. This article demonstrates how the principles of Taguchi's Orthogonal Arrays can be applied in a system dynamics model highlighting the presence of two brand categories (preferred and un-preferred) and their respective RL processes that substantially influences product shelf life, maximum allowable sales loss, and delays in the reverse logistics process. The contributions of this research are: (i) market flooding of expired stock can be alleviated for longer shelf life and preferred brands by increasing marketing efforts. (ii) Increasing safety stocks helps sales in a dynamic market but does not alleviate market flooding. (iii) Due to the absence of feedback between reverse and forward logistics processes, improvements in reverse logistics attributes like product return and claims processing delays do not impact sales rather it alleviates market flooding. The medicine take-back policies in India need to be sensitive to the category of the product. There is also a potential for placing checks on the supply side to alleviate market flooding, and a need to provide feedback between reverse and forward logistics through risk-sharing agreements in order to enable product take-back for both disposal and relocation to needy markets. The possible research extensions include the structural changes in the proposed model to test RL, for sustainability policies and the study of brand/product level competition. Manuscript Highlights • Dynamic relations among factors like production, sales, reverse logistics practices and industry growth is mapped. • Model developed consists of reverse logistics practices for preferred and un-preferred brands. • System Dynamics model is used to capture the market dynamics of the Indian pharmaceuticals industry. • Important control factors are identified to improve existing RL and sustainability. • Structural changes using the SD model are suggested to achieve sustainable goals by the industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Packaging enables the movement of product from its point of origin to its point of consumption and influences all other industries directly or indirectly. Despite technological advancements, increasing length of global supply chains for products has led to a simultaneous increase in the use of packaging layers and associated waste along the supply chain. Thus, packaging poses challenges and opportunities to the environment and society, with implications for supply chain costs. With growing popularity of concepts such as circular economy and sustainability, packaging and its relationship with sustainability and supply chain management in a circular economy needs to be studied. This paper presents a systematic literature review of studies done over the last 18 years with the objective to generate a greater understanding of the work done in the field of sustainable packaging in supply chain management (SPSCM). Our findings indicate SPSCM trends are aligned to circular economy concepts but have not adequately considered the interaction of the product with its packaging system. Research efforts in SPSCM are restricted to environmental and economic dimensions and are mostly concentrated in developed economies. The review identifies three main supply chain structures studied in SPSCM literature of which there has been an increased focus on fragmented portions and dyads of the supply chain with respect to packaging. The research contributes by identifying and mapping the collated literature to organizational theories that support and drive SPSCM. In particular, the institutional theory, stakeholder theory and ecological modernization theory are investigated from a SPSCM perspective. Further, the three organizational theories are used to develop a framework for circular economy to highlight future avenues for research and practice in SPSCM for a circular economy. • Systematic review of recent literature in Sustainable packaging in supply chain management for a circular economy. • Results highlight dominance of reuse and return practices of packaging. • Low focus on developing economies, social dimension and integration of product-packaging systems. • Three main supply chain structures have been addressed in the SPSCM literature. • Circular economy framework has been developed using three organizational theories and four key CE elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]