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Managing drinking water in its distribution pathways is one of the main indicators of the quality of service provided to the consumer. Its quality management is important since human health and livelihoods depend on adequate, clean, reliable water supplies. Unfortunately, this is not true to many neighborhoods in developing countries and the quality of water distributed in Umoja Innercore is no exemption. This research sought to evaluate how the management of water affects its distribution in the entity from source to the household. Six borehole owners and 5 water bowsers were interviewed and 156 households’ questionnaires were administered in a systematic random manner through a survey carried out over a period of 10 days. The study found out that 29.3% of respondents get treated water directly from Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company (NCWSC), 32.7 and 25.3% get untreated water from water bowsers and water carts through jerrycans, 10% indicated water kiosk and 3% from rainwater. The cost of water ranges from Ksh. 20 per 20-L jerrycan to Ksh., 50 during scarce periods. 89% of sampled households treat all water out of which, 52% boil water, 20% use filtration cans, 26% further chlorinate the water, and 3% strain water through sieve clothe. The study reveals the inconsistency of monitoring by NCWSC of the available sources of water and unregulated cartels compromising water quality. The study recommends regulating and incorporating private boreholes distributors to the network through a quasi-delegated model using an inter-estate bulk treatment for quality measures before supplying to households. Key words: Nairobi, Quasi-delegated management, sustainable distribution, Umoja Innercore, quality drinking water.

To survive, organizations should inevitably work based on sustainability principles in an ever-increasing changes of markets. Appropriate flexibility and responsiveness are particularly important when considering sustainability issue and market changes in clustering problem. One of the uses of clustering can be allocation of resources and equipment for providing the highest level of customer service which has been a matter of concern for decision makers in distributive companies. Capacitive clustering is a common method for solving allocation and distribution problems. However, traditional clustering models ignore sustainability criteria in defining clusters’ capacity. The objective of this study, therefore, is to propose a novel method for optimizing resource allocation for customers given the sustainability criteria. Capacitive clustering is a technique that has a widespread application in data mining. This approach has been used for equipment distribution, sales targeting, market segmentation, etc. One prevalent clustering method is growing neural gas network (GNGN) technique. GNGN is a neural network with uncontrolled learning. In this paper, for the first time, we utilize GNGN to cluster customers given sustainability criteria. Here, the clusters’ centers are determined and allocated with regard to capacity constraints of the clusters. The obtained results in general can be regarded as an optimized sustainable distribution system in which the number of trucks, distribution routes as well as fuel consumptions and environmental pollutions are minimized. We can also refer to reductions in urban traffic, maintenance costs, staff costs, and decreases in the fatigue of drivers and distributers due to the proximity of supermarkets. An illustrative case study is done to indicate the applicability and remarkable contributions of the suggested clustering approach.

The sharing economy has become a global phenomenon that increasingly transforms how we move, travel, work, and consume. Given that consumption practices such as swapping, gifting, reselling, co-using, lending or renting (summed up as peer-to-peer sharing) can facilitate an extended or more intensive use of products, sustainability was early linked to the idea of access instead of ownership. From an ecological perspective, a more equitable and sustainable distribution of resources is feasible, through reducing the costs of accessing products and services and save scarce resources. Apart from having positive environmental effects, peer-to-peer sharing is expected to foster new forms of collaboration, solidarity and social bonding among individuals and to lead the way towards a collaborative economy that is characterized by a greater sense of community, decentralization and solidarity. In recent years, however, the sharing economy has also increasingly provoked considerable criticisms. This paper provides an analysis of the sustainability potentials of peer-to-peer sharing in the domains of accommodation and mobility and contrasts these potentials with its actual impacts in Germany. We show that in order to put peer-to-peer sharing on a sustainable development path, particular changes of consumption habits, organizational innovations and political interventions are needed.

International audience; In a growing transportation market, the optimization and organization of distribution networks have become an important issue for companies that are looking for improving the efficiency of their freight transport systems. In this context, the adoption of a collaboration strategy between various logistics actors can enhance the operational efficiency of the networks and reduce sustainability impacts. In this paper, we evaluate the economic, environmental and social benefits of the logistics collaboration using an integrated planning approach that simultaneously optimizes the inventory, location and routing decisions. Firstly, we propose and adapt a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model to design a collaborative and noncollaborative sustainable distribution network. Secondly, we examine one of the problems that can cause conflict between partners, namely the cost-sharing problem. Finally, we discuss a case study of a French distribution network. The obtained results show that collaboration in integrated planning can significantly reduce CO_2 emissions, logistics costs and accident rate.

Spontaneously fermented sorghum beers remain by far the most popular traditional cereal-based alcoholic beverages in Africa. Known under various common names (traditional beers, sorghum beers, opaque, native or indigenous beers) they are also recognized under various local names depending on the region or ethnic group. Dolo and pito are two similar traditional beers popular in West African countries including Burkina Faso, Mali, Ghana, Benin, Togo, Nigeria and Ivory Coast. These low-alcoholic beers are nutritious and contribute to the nutritional balance of local populations, as well as to their socio-cultural and economic well-being. The production of African traditional beers remains one of the major economic activities, creating employment and generating substantial income that contributes to livelihoods as well as the countries' economic systems. Their processing (malting and brewing) is still artisanal, based on traditional family know-how. The brewing process involves either an acidification and an alcoholic fermentation phases, or a mixed fermentation combining LAB and yeasts. Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been identified as the dominant yeast species involved in the alcoholic fermentation, with a biodiversity at strain level. LAB involved in the processing belong to the genera of Limosilactobacillus, Lactobacillus, Pediococcus, Leuconostoc, Lactococcus, Streptococcus, and Enterococcus. Molds (Aspergillus, Penicillium, Rhizopus, Geotrichum), and acetic bacteria are often associated with the malting and brewing processes. Challenges for sustainable production of African sorghum beer include inconsistent supply of raw materials, variability in product quality and safety, high energy consumption and its impact on the environment, poor packaging and short shelf-life. For sustainable and environmentally-friendly production of African sorghum beers, there is the need to assess the processing methods and address sustainability challenges. Strategies should promote wider distribution and adoption of improved sorghum varieties among farmers, prevent losses through the adoption of good storage practices of raw material, promote the adoption of improved cook stoves by the brewers, develop and adopt starter cultures for controlled fermentation, regulate the production through the establishment of quality standards and better valorize by-products and wastes to increase the competitiveness of the value chain. Appropriate packaging and stabilization processes should be developed to extend the shelf-life and diversify the channels for sustainable distribution of African cereal-based alcoholic beverages.

Urban distribution networks now face the contradiction between high power supply reliability and low power energy growth. Sustainable distribution network planning strategies should be carried out for better quality but less cost. To make the distribution network planning easier, this paper proposes a mesh model abstract for the actual distribution network. Then a three layer evaluation index system coherent to this mesh grid is built around system reliability, security, efficiency and economic factors. The improved analytic hierarchy process and entropy weight method are used for calculating the subjective and objective weights of the indexes. The comprehensive weights are calculated according to the minimum discriminant information method. Then, various planning schemes such as single loop network and diamond distribution network are evaluated by TOPSIS method. The case study shows that the proposed method is able to quantitatively describe the advantages and disadvantages of distribution network planning schemes, which assists planning managers in built the future distribution network reasonably.

The effective evaluation of the connectable capacity of renewable energy plays a vital role in the development of a sustainable distribution network. Quantifying the capacity while considering network security and the local renewable accommodation policy is a challenge. This article proposes a scenario-based bilevel mathematical model using a Bayesian integrated optimization method to evaluate and quantify the connectable capacity of distributed wind generation in distribution networks, which effectively integrates the characteristics of wind power and the local accommodation policy. The constraint on the generation curtailment ratio (CR) is innovatively designed to represent the renewable accommodation policy and integrated with network security constraints to coordinatively quantify the capacity. The model is solved by the Bayesian integrated optimization method. The regression-based algorithm greatly reduces the complexity of alternating iteration and improves the calculation efficiency. Practical cases are used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. Results indicate that the method is more efficient than traditional optimization algorithms, and CR integration ensures that the connectable capacity fits local renewable energy development policies well.

This article evaluates the efficiency of three meta-heuristic optimiser (viz. MOGA-II, MOPSO and NSGA-II)-based solution methods for designing a sustainable three-echelon distribution network. The distribution network employs a bi-objective location-routing model. Due to the mathematically NP-hard nature of the model a multi-disciplinary optimisation commercial platform, modeFRONTIER®, is adopted to utilise the solution methods. The proposed Design of Experiment (DoE)-guided solution methods are of two phased that solve the NP-hard model to attain minimal total costs and total CO2 emission from transportation. Convergence of the optimisers are tested and compared. Ranking of the realistic results are examined using Pareto frontiers and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution approach, followed by determination of the optimal transportation routes. A case of an Irish dairy processing industry’s three-echelon logistics network is considered to validate the solution methods. The results obtained through the proposed methods provide information on open/closed distribution centres (DCs), vehicle routing patterns connecting plants to DCs, open DCs to retailers and retailers to retailers, and number of trucks required in each route to transport the products. It is found that the DoE-guided NSGA-II optimiser based solution is more efficient when compared with the DoE-guided MOGA-II and MOPSO optimiser based solution methods in solving the bi-objective NP-hard three-echelon sustainable model. This efficient solution method enable managers to structure the physical distribution network on the demand side of a logistics network, minimising total cost and total CO2 emission from transportation while satisfying all operational constraints.

Cold-chain products are time-sensitive and perishable and pose the risk of failure if they are transported to a distant location. Thus, there is a need to analyze their quality during distribution so that the customers may receive optimal-quality products. To address this issue, this study integrates inspection strategies with the sustainable distribution system of multi-quality multiple-cold-chain products. A bi-objective model of cost and emission is proposed under the constraints of heterogeneous vehicle and time window. Furthermore, this study intends to address the following questions: which inspection strategy helps to ensure the potency of delivered products, and what is the impact of quality differentiation on the value of objective functions? A set of meta-heuristics is used for implementing the model using a rich panel of experiments. The results reveal that the quality conditions of different products impact the solutions of cost and emissions. Moreover, the conformity strategy is more viable, as it results in less cost and ensures that the quantity of delivered products meets the level of demand. Finally, the study provides implications for managers and practitioners to develop a sustainable distribution system to maintain the quality of cold-chain products.

Fair trade is an integral part of sustainable distribution in the sense of informing customers about the conditions of production of fair-trade products and their promotion. However, the presence of another category of these products marketed under the distributor name (Distributor Brand) may or may not be advisable to attract the attention of consumer actors towards fair trade products. This article aims to understand the relationship between fair trade products marketed under the (Distributor Brand) and fair-trade products in Large and Medium Surfaces in terms of opportunities and threats.

Sustainable development is playing an increasingly important role in today’s society, and it is essential for companies seeking to meet the needs of the market to pay increasing attention to the application of sustainable development principles in their operations. The enterprise logistics system is one of the essential activities ensuring the company’s competitiveness, which ensures timely production and quality of customer service. However, in order to integrate the principles of sustainable development into the company’s logistics system, it is necessary to develop a model that identifies the impact of sustainability on each factor of the logistics system. The paper analyses the impact of sustainable development on distribution logistics to determine which activities in distribution logistics are most responsive to sustainable development and can help determine the level of corporate sustainability. The main purpose of the model, presented in the paper, is to help the business sector integrate sustainable development principles effectively in distribution logistics, taking into account the significance of ongoing factors in the system for sustainability.

The food distribution process is responsible for significant quality loss in perishable products. However, preserving quality is costly and consumes a tremendous amount of energy. To tackle the challenge of minimizing transportation costs and CO2 emissions while also maximizing product freshness, a novel multi-objective model is proposed. The model integrates a vehicle routing problem with temperature, shelf life, and energy consumption prediction models, thereby enhancing its accuracy. Non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II is adapted to solve the proposed model for the set of Solomon test data. The conflicting nature of these objectives and the sensitivity of the model to shelf life and shipping container temperature settings are analyzed. The results show that optimizing freshness objective degrade the cost and the emission objectives, and the distribution of perishable foods are sensible to the shelf life of the perishable foods and temperature settings inside the container.

This article introduces a sustainable integrated bi-objective location-routing model, its two-phase solution approach and an analysis procedure for the distribution side of three-echelon logistics networks. The mixed-integer programming model captures several real-world factors by introducing an additional objective function and a set of new constraints in the model that outbound logistics channels find difficult to reconcile. The sustainable model minimises CO2 emissions from transportation and total costs incurred in facilities and the transportation channels. Design of Experiment (DoE) is integrated to the meta-heuristic based optimiser to solve the model in two phases. The DoE-guided solution approach enables the optimiser to offer the best stable solution space by taking out solutions with poor design features from the space and refining the feasible solutions using a convergence algorithm thereby selecting the realistic results. Several alternative solution scenarios are obtained by prioritising and ranking the realistic solution sets through a multi-attribute decision analysis tool, Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). The robust model provides the decision maker the ability to take decisions on sustainable open alternative optimal routes. The outcomes of this research provide theoretical and methodological contributions, in terms of integrated bi-objective location-routing model and its two-phase DoE-guided meta-heuristic solution approach, for the distribution side of three-echelon logistics networks.

To gain legitimacy for climate change adaptation decisions, the distribution of responsibility for these decisions and their implementation needs to be grounded in theories of just distribution and what those affected by decisions see as just. The purpose of this project is to contribute to sustainable spatial planning and the ability of local and regional public authorities to make well-informed and sustainable adaptation decisions, based on knowledge about both climate change impacts and the perceptions of residents and civil servants on what constitutes a sustainable distribution of responsibility. Our aims are: (1) a better understanding of the practical implications of theories about just distribution of responsibility for the choice of local and regional climate adaptation measures; (2) knowledge about what residents and civil servants consider a sustainable distribution of responsibility for climate adaptation measures; and (3) a better understanding of conflicts concerning the distribution of responsibilities and systematic knowledge about the possibilities to manage them. In this interdisciplinary project, we study six municipalities and their residents, and two county administrative boards, all in Sweden, using mixed methods: value theory, document studies, interviews, focus groups, and surveys.

On first glance, distribution strategy seems to be the staidest of all the marketing functions, yet it is fundamental to business success. This chapter shows how consumers have created new strategies for dealing with those goods and services that they no longer need or for reclaiming those goods that may to the untrained eye appear to be worthless (broken, disfigured, out of style, for example). It presents The Inverted Pyramid of Sustainability and discusses specific marketing strategies that relate to each section. The chapter looks at examples of these redistribution channels to see how consumers in these markets are using these channels to enact values of sustainability. It considers how corporations have been tackling these issues, oftentimes in response to grassroots consumer actions. The chapter presents exercises designed to open up student debate around sustainable distribution and the role consumers play therein.

Designing strategies to introduce new HIV prevention technologies requires balancing equitable access with sustainable distribution, particularly in resource constrained settings with high HIV prevalence. This paper explores how knowledge of preference heterogeneity can guide the equitable targeting of HIV prevention products using differentiated advertising and product placement to balance increased access with sustainability. A discrete choice experiment elicited 1016 women's preferences for distribution of HIV prevention products in South Africa. Qualitative research guided the experimental design which considered distribution outlet, collection method, advertising message, and price. A range of choice models, including random parameters logit, latent class and latent class random parameters logit models, were compared for fit. A latent class model showed the best fit and distinguished two classes of women: Class 1 were significantly more likely to be cohabiting and unemployed, who preferred products advertised for HIV prevention distributed through clinics and were highly price sensitive. Class 2 significantly preferred distribution through pharmacies and advertising around women's empowerment, while price was not a key factor. This analysis suggests that equity in access to new products could be advanced through exploiting preference heterogeneity between groups. The identified groups can be then used to design social marketing differentiated distribution strategies. Distributing free products promoted for HIV prevention could discourage ‘leakage’ of highly subsidised products to women with some capacity to pay, while priced products marketed for women's empowerment through pharmacies could encourage cost recovery with minimal reductions in coverage among employed women.

Wind energy has attracted more attentions in recent decades as a green and sustainable electricity generation resource with little or no pollution. Fluctuations in output of wind turbines and their dependency on environmental conditions, however, limit their penetration into power grids. This research proposes a collaboration platform to overcome these challenges by collaboration among communities in the energy distribution network. First, a second order trigonometric regression model is applied to forecast energy demands, and a multiple linear regression model is used to predict energy output of a wind farm. Based on this information, communities in the network can initiate the collaboration process through the proposed platform, which is controlled by two collaboration protocols: Demand and Capacity Sharing Protocol (DCSP) and Best Matching Protocol (BMP). The protocols are applied to optimize communities' profit through matching the communities with excessive capacity with the ones with energy shortage so that they can create a sustainable distribution network. A simulation of three communities with three wind farms is conducted to measure the impact of the platform. The results show the sustainability of the energy network can be achieved by reduced demand loss and holding cost and improved collaborative capacity.

Due to the increasing penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs) required for the sustainable distribution system, new voltage control strategy is needed by utilities. Traditional voltage control strategy can not support the increasing number of DERs in a coordinated and scalable manner to meet the operational voltage regulation requirement. Supported by the power electronics converter, the energy storage system can provide fast, smooth, and flexible voltage control services. In this paper, an effective and easy to implement sensitivity-based voltage control strategy is developed for the energy storage system. The developed control strategy is validated using an industrial feeder data in Northwest Washington. The proposed strategy can mitigate the voltage unbalance issue, improve the voltage profile, and correct power factors while supporting sustainable distribution system operation.

The unprecedented growth of technological advances, industrialization and sophisticated urbanization have contributed to a staggering proliferation of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and renewable energy sources (RESs) in transportation and electric power distribution systems. As a result, the nature of optimal distribution network operation is ever-changing due to the dramatic uncertainty in the increased energy supply and demand caused by large integration of these emerging technologies into the systems. This study proposes a synergistic approach for boosting power system operation performance in sustainable distribution networks considering renewable power generation and high integration of PHEVs, using multi-objective stochastic optimization and probabilistic analysis techniques. To this end, distribution network reconfiguration and evolutionary optimization schemes are deployed, and a probabilistic multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) system based on point estimate method is developed, considering stochastic correlation between distributed energy generation sources. The results obtained along with the performance appraisal observations, indicate the effectiveness of the proposed method in sustainable active distribution network operation management in their entirety.

In this chapter we discuss the importance of vehicle routing problems in improving sustainability of temperature-controlled transportation of perishable products. Transportation of these products requires substantial amounts of energy to optimize the product environment and delay the decay process. Because of this, minimizing traveling distance is not a sufficient objective to improve sustainability of this type of transportation systems. To achieve a more sustainable distribution of perishable products, other objectives related to spoilage and greenhouse gas emissions should also be evaluated. Moreover, it is important that the potential of new technologies and alternative logistical concepts (e.g., collaboration) are explored and analyzed quantitatively.

The existence of numerous social, economic, and environmental problems and the need to improve the long-term performance in organizations have led the supply chain designs toward sustainable designs. On the other hand, due to the emersion of new technologies and the creation of new business models, the increase of competition level among retailers and the raise of customers expectations, the use of a multi-channel distribution system is nowadays growing. Therefore, the appropriate distribution channel according to the product type and the number of vehicles for the transportation of the products is a significant and important issue in retailing systems. In this regard, in this paper, a mixed-integer programming model for the sustainable distribution network design, considering multi-product, multi-echelon and multi-transportation mode especially third party logistics (3PL), is presented. The economic, environmental, and social objectives are mathematically formulated, where these objectives include: 1) minimizing transportation costs, purchasing vehicles and building warehouses as the first objective, 2) minimizing the amount of carbon dioxide released by transport vehicles and building warehouses, 3) maximizing the number of job opportunities. After linearization of the proposed model, it is solved using the goal programming technique by GAMS software. Finally, to evaluate the applicability of the proposed mathematical model, Digikala company is used as a case study.

This chapter focuses on French food retailers and sustainable development. The food retailing groups can be divided into three types of distributors: integrated groups (Carrefour, Casino, Auchan, and Cora), groups of independent stores (Leclerc, Intermarche, and System U), and hard discounters as (Lidl and Aldi). In addition, in the sphere of more sustainable distribution, there are also specialized retailers such as Biocoop, Naturalia, La Vie Claire, and direct channels. These channels offer an alternative to the dominant model of industrialized and standardized agriculture and supply symbolized by mass distribution. The evolution of the discourse on sustainable development from 2005 to strategies proposing local products, bio products, and private labels shows that mass retailers have understood that taking into account the collective interest of society can be a source of significant differentiation in a fiercely competitive market. A supplementary finding of this chapter is the major strategic role of private labels in the implementation of retailers’ sustainable development policy: improving products, rethinking packaging policy, and formulating advice for consumers.

The UK is a developed retail economy with some of the largest and most powerful retailers in the world. These retailers have been attempting to offer sustainable distribution, both for consumer focus reasons and as an aid to performance. At the other end of the scale, small local community focused stores have begun to emerge to offer an alternative food supply to that of the major chains. They too argue for a focus on sustainability but from a very different perspective. This chapter explores these varying approaches, using the contrasts to develop a discussion about sustainable distribution in the UK.

In large Chinese cities, inefficient logistics organization, a rapid increase in freight demand, and the spreading of city logistics space have jointly contributed to the urban problems related to goods movement, such as spatial conflicts, traffic congestion, and air pollution. To address these problems and improve urban sustainability, we proposed a new spatial organization model of supply&ndash, demand coordination. We used the data from the Third China Economic Census and online point-of-interest (POI) for China&rsquo, s four direct-controlled municipalities and 13 sub-provincial cities. We found that: (1) the freight supply and demand in China&rsquo, s large cities are both spatially decentralized and clustered. However, there is a significant spatial mismatch between freight supply and demand in most of the studied cities. (2) The 17 studied cities can be divided into three types&mdash, highly unbalanced, unbalanced, and balanced&mdash, in light of the spatial mismatch between freight supply and demand. (3) The capacities of road surface and logistics nodes spatially differ. The supply capacity of the road systems in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou can only accommodate 18.4%, 35.5%, and 32.2% of the demand, respectively, while the supply capacity of the logistics nodes is more than twice that of the actual demand in these cities. Based on the findings, this paper proposed a differentiated method of demand management in different areas of the cities. To achieve the goals of low-carbon and sustainable development in logistics distribution, policy makers may consider planning urban freight activities along metro lines and intercity rail lines. Thus, this paper will provide a new perspective for understanding the urban freight distribution and management in large Chinese cities.

The selection of site for Health services is difficult, complicated, and protracted process, which requires determining different criteria for assessment. In Upper Egypt, there are no clear standards or certified criteria for a sustainable distribution of health services. Therefore, there is a crucial need to determine clear and specific standards to ensure a sustainable distribution of health services.. This study aims to identify and prioritize the criteria that affect sustainable distribution of health services in Upper Egypt (Aswan), using an Analytical Hierarchy process (AHP) survey. Research findings show that the urban standards are the most important criterion, followed by the environmental criterion, then social criterion, and the economical criterion, respectively. The study identified 12 sub criteria based on the literature review the contribution of this work lays in presenting a framework that could guide decision-makers, simply and comprehensively, in their attempt to promote sustainability.

Site selection for location of a hospital is one of the crucial policy-related decisions taken by the government. In upper Egypt, the cities suffer from a shortage and bad distribution of hospital site. The selection of the appropriate hospital site requires consideration of multiple alternative solutions and evaluation factor. We develop a Multi-Criteria Decision Support System (MCDSS) process that combines Geographical Information System (GIS) analysis with Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and use this process to determine the optimum site for a new hospital in the Aswan urban area. Based on actual conditions Aswan city, we used three main factors and seven sub-factors. The main factors are urban, environmental and economic factors. An application adopting AHP process was developed to calculate weights of every factor. Spatial analysis in GIS was used to overlay and generate factors maps and suitability evaluation map. All maps are classified from 1 (low suitable) to 5 (high suitable) using spatial information technologies. The candidate sites are divided by best, good and unsuitable hospital areas. Best hospital site represents optimal sites; good hospital site can be used as back-up candidate sites. The study was found that best area (S3) is about 30%, and most of these are located in the south part of the study area; good area (S2) is about 58%, and most of these are located in the central part of the study area; unsuitable area (S1) is about 12%, and most of these are located in the Eastern and Western parts of the study area. Finally, the study ends with an assessment of proposed sites.

The purpose of this article is to highlight the complex process of distribution for sustainable textile products. The main objective is to establish the most effective and sustainable distribution policies and strategies used by textile companies in Romania. It can be said that the distribution chain has to be very short and in many cases, conducted by the producer itself, because he has to follow the sustainable product through all its life phases. In conclusion, it can be said that for many companies the distribution process has a great impact on the environment, therefore it is very important to supervise the distribution chain.

Timely, affordable access to screened blood is essential to the provision of safe surgical care and depends on three key aspects: adequate volume of blood supply, safe protocols for blood donation and transfusion, and appropriate regulation to ensure safe, equitable and sustainable distribution. Many low-income and middle-income countries experience a deficit in these categories, particularly in rural areas. We draw on the experience of rural surgical practitioners in India and summarise the existing literature to evaluate India's blood banking system and discuss its major barriers to the safe and equitable provision of blood. Many low-income and middle-income countries struggle with accruing a sufficient voluntary, unpaid blood donation base to meet the need. Efforts to increase blood supply through mandatory family replacement donations can lead to dangerous delays in care provision. Additionally, prohibition of unbanked, directed blood transfusion restricts the options of health practitioners, particularly in rural areas. Blood safety is also a significant concern, and efforts must be taken to decrease the risk of transfusion-transmitted infections and inform and treat donors who test positive. Lastly, blood banking systems need a centralised governing body to ensure fair prices for blood, promote comprehensive transfusion reporting and increase system-wide transparency and accountability.

This paper presents a novel multidimensional conceptual framework for achieving sustainable consumption and production. The paper adopts a qualitative approach through literature and theoretical reviews. The paper argues that while current research on SCP is dominated by a market-oriented philosophical configuration, the quest for sustainability has to integrate non-market considerations, which drives consumerism. After exploring the theoretical dimensions and the literature review, the paper leans on these to develop a new framework, which this paper refers to as 'multidimensional framework for sustainable consumption and production'; this is followed by a proposal of five new research models for further researching of sustainable sourcing of materials, sustainable production, sustainable consumption, sustainable distribution and sustainable waste management. The suggested framework and the five models provide new insight for improved policy and practice. This paper contributes new framework and models, which is absent in the literature.

Sustainability research has increasingly progressed to incorporate economic, environmental and social aspects of business. While firms are inherently competing with each other in logistics distribution, this study investigates whether coopetition strategy (i.e. cooperate and compete) can lead to achieving the sustainability. Using a cross-sectional sample of newspaper supply chain partners including transporters and newsagents in Thailand, the results of structural equation modelling path analysis suggest that managers strongly believe in coopetitive approach to achieve sustainable logistics distribution resulting in significant economic, social and environmental improvement. The findings help managers to understand that firms that perceive to collaborate with competitors in a horizontal relationship can achieve sustainable logistic distribution.

This publication presents subject matter connected with the role of seaports as integrated logistics centers in the development of sustainable distribution of goods in urban areas. Seaports as integrated logistics centers and multifunctional socio-economic spaces are the key components of the European and global transport system. They carry out the functions and services necessary for the efficiency of supply chains, and their final elements include the distribution of goods from the places of production to places of consumption. Seaports cover the transport, logistic, distribution and spatial functions, which influence city development, while logistics centers cover the distribution function. The development of seaports is a result of their multifunctionality and multimodality focused on the widening of the range of services, which allows them to meet different demands of the environment. Thus, seaports and logistics centers have become elements of urban transport systems included in the EU policy of sustainable development of transport. Particularly important here is the latest implementation of the objectives of the EU White Paper on the development of resource-efficient and low-carbon transport in ecological urban transport. The publication presents existing solutions and possible directions concerning the activity of seaports as logistics centers in the area of urban logistics.

Sustainable supply chain management is a topical area which is continuing to grow and evolve. Within supply chains, downstream distribution from producers to customers plays a significant role in the environmental performance of production supply chains. With consumer consciousness growing in the area of sustainable food supply, food distribution needs to embrace and adapt to improve its environmental performance, while still remaining economically competitive. With a particular focus on the dairy industry, a robust solution approach is presented for the design of a capacitated distribution network for a two-layer supply chain involved in the distribution of milk in Ireland. In particular the green multiobjective\ud optimisation model minimises CO2 emissions from transportation and total costs in the distribution chain. These distribution channels are analysed to ensure the non-dominated solutions are distributed along the Pareto fronts. A multi-attribute decision-making approach, TOPSIS, has been used to rank the realistic feasible transportation routes resulting from the trade-offs between total costs and CO2 emissions. The refined realistic solution space allows the decision-makers to geographically locate the sustainable transportation routes. In addition to geographical mapping the decision maker is also presented with a number of alternative\ud analysed scenarios which forcibly open closed distribution routes to build resiliency into the\ud solution approach. In terms of model performance, three separate GA based optimisers have been evaluated and reported upon. In the case presented NSGA-II was found to outperform\ud its counterparts of MOGA-II and HYBRID.

The paper focuses on studying the impediments for new entrants into emerging markets from a perspective of the African economies and proposes a conceptual framework for a sustainable distribution system. While there is a lot of research on emerging economies, African markets have remained relatively untouched, more so from the distribution perspective. Further, the speed at which business transformations are happening in these markets, academic research needs to keep pace with such changes. The paper proposes four broad impediments to distribution and eleven sub-dimensions i.e. political and security, cultural, ethnic and economic diversity, infrastructural gaps, channel structures and Governance, to name a few. The proposed conceptual framework defines four strategic interventions, namely, connecting with the masses, inclusive growth, leveraging existing networks and financing micro enterprises to build a sustainable network in the African markets. The methodology for the study is an integrative analysis of existing literature, case examples and personal experience on entry strategy advisory in Africa and other emerging markets by the lead author

Rapidly rising needs for generating electricity with little or no pollution make wind energy imperative. Fluctuations in output of wind turbines and their frequent stoppages for maintenance or breakdowns, however, limit their penetration into power grids. In this research, pattern recognition models are applied to enhance output estimation by improved failure prediction. In addition, a collaboration platform is developed with demand and capacity sharing and best Matching Protocols that facilitate rationalized collaboration between energy providers to create sustainable distribution networks. A simulation of two communities with two farms and 100 members is conducted to measure the impact of the collaboration platform.

Sweet potato varieties are distributed in Uganda by three systems: formal, project-based and informal. In a partial formal system, the National Sweetpotato Program (NSP) breeds and tests both orange (O)- and white (W)-fleshed sweet potato (FSP) varieties. The NSP and other national institutions provide vine stocks of mostly OFSP varieties to project-based seed systems involving large private sector multipliers, which are found predominantly in east and central Uganda. These are mainly either cooperatives derived from smallholder groups organized by projects or are individual farmers with large holdings who had hosted NSP variety trials. The private sector multipliers sell planting materials of released varieties to projects, which distribute them free to selected households. Projects buy hundreds and occasionally thousands of sacks of vines but they distribute them to only a limited number of needy households and for only one or a few seasons. The informal system functions predominantly in areas with a long dry season, in which vines cannot survive. Its vine multipliers use the wetter lowlands to maintain mostly landraces, which they sell as small bundles of vines to many smallholders at the onset of the rains. Very few multiply released varieties. Thus, with a ready market, the system is sustainable but quantities sold are price limited. All vine multipliers supplied healthy planting material. It is proposed that the NSP should aim their trials of new varieties at informal vine multipliers and projects should supply vines to these multipliers in order to improve their access to them. This would promote the sustainable distribution of vines, including new varieties, over a greater area and to a larger number of farmers.

A fairer and sustainable distribution of added value and information along the food supply chain is becoming a relevant issue. Extensive literature has analyzed the development of distributions models, commonly called Alternative Food Networks (AFNs), that short-circuit the long, complex and rationally organized industrial chain, emphasizing their meanings in terms of economic, environmental and social sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to present some preliminary results from an on-going research that aims to investigate on rules and criteria for a fairer market. In particular we propose an analysis of AFNs in Italy, using Fair Trade as benchmark, according to their capacity to carry out fairer relationships between producers and consumers. AFNs evaluation, based on a qualitative analysis carried out looking for a representative sample of cases, has been done considering their results in terms of: distribution of value along the chain; price fairness and transparency; access to markets for small producers; compliance of products to social standards; relationships between consumers and producers (involvement, stability and trust). Three types of AFNs are discussed: Direct selling, Farmers’ Markets, Partnership between producers and consumers (in the form of Solidarity Purchasing Groups).

The efficiency of humanitarian aid supply chains is critical to effective emergency response. In addition, a sustainable supply chain network facilitates the rapid recovery of devastated areas and provides relief for the affected populations. Thus, an efficient, reliable and sustainable emergency supply chain management system plays a critical role in the humanitarian relief operations. Currently, a typical NGO ERP (enterprise resource planning) system does not address the specific needs of emergency humanitarian relief functions. Without an emergency supply chain management system, the lack of coordination and potential human errors will cause unnecessary delays and wastes in resources, which jeopardizes the safety, and sometimes survival, of affected people. In addition, tracking relief materials from donor resources all the way to distribution to target beneficiaries is important for accountability and transparency. In this project, Purdue University and Catholic Relief Services (CRS) are co-designing a web-based, multi-platform, centralized, offline-compatible electrical emergency response system. This system is capable of connecting all global warehouses across different country programs, requesting and approving relief materials, checking inventory levels, tracking relief materials from donors to beneficiaries, and automatically generating accounting and beneficiary reports. This application will help NGOs form efficient, reliable and sustainable distribution plans for emergency responses with the most updated information.