Impact of transportation and carbon emissions on reverse channel selection in closed-loop supply chain management

Remanufacturing has gained significant attention as a way to combat global warming and natural resource depletion due to its potential environmental and economic benefits. However, transportation and logistics activities in the reverse supply chain, a critical component of the closed-loop supply chains (CLSC), have been largely overlooked by both academics and businesses. This work aims to bridge the gap by mapping the impacts of transportation distances and costs on the environmental and economic performance of CLSC management. We develop a hybrid manufacturing–remanufacturing model under different reverse-channel structures and examine the relationships between transportation distances and costs, the remanufacturing rate, the optimal reverse channel, and the net emissions of the system. The results show that the optimal remanufacturing rate decreases with an increase in transportation distances of the reverse supply chain only, and forward distance has no impact on the remanufacturing rate. However, increasing market demand reduces the impacts of long reverse distances. Furthermore, the cost of transportation also affects the remanufacturing rate. We also found that increasing remanufacturing rate increases total emissions due to higher reverse transportation distances.