Reverse logistics refers to all logistics activities related to resource recovery, resource substitution, resource reuse and resource disposal. It can make full use of existing resources and reduce the demand for raw materials, and is often regarded as an important measure to build a circular economy in developed countries. The implementation of reverse green logistics is a systematic project, which requires perfect commodity recall system, waste recovery system and hazardous waste treatment and disposal system.
1. Disposal of waste materials
There are two main sources of waste produced by enterprises in the process of forward logistics:
First, qualified products are not formed in the production process, and materials with no use value, such as waste products and scrapped parts produced during product processing, steel slag produced by iron and steel plants, and chips formed by cutting processing produced by machinery plants, etc.
The other is the waste produced in the circulation process, such as abandoned wooden cases, woven bags, cartons, ropes and so on. Generated after unpacking the bundled goods. With the decrease of garbage dumps, it is becoming more and more important to find ways to reduce the waste on site.
On the one hand, manufacturers should strengthen the logistics arrangement of feeding and materials;
On the other hand, the availability and recycling performance of resources should be considered in the design stage of products to reduce the production of waste.
Step 2 recycle old products
The recycling of old products is the starting point of reverse logistics, which determines whether the whole reverse logistics system can be profitable. The quantity and quality of old products, the way of recycling and the time of returning products should all be controlled. If these problems are not effectively controlled, the whole reverse logistics system may fall into chaos, which can not guarantee the reprocessing efficiency of these products. To solve this problem, manufacturers must keep good contact and communication with wholesalers and retailers responsible for collecting old products.
3, inspection and handling
Testing, sorting and grading of recycled products is a labor-intensive and time-intensive work. However, this process can be improved if enterprises set up quality standards and use technologies such as sensors and bar codes to automate detection. Generally speaking, in the reverse logistics system, enterprises should make product disposal decisions as soon as possible on the basis of quality, product shape or variables, which can greatly reduce logistics costs and shorten the time to market of reprocessed products.
4. Maintenance and recovery of recycled products
There are two main ways for enterprises to obtain value from recycling: one is to take out the parts, repair them and reuse them; The second is to reprocess and resell all products. However, compared with traditional production, the repair and reprocessing of recycled products are uncertain, because the quality and time of recycled products may vary greatly, which requires us to integrate products with similar grades, quality and production time as much as possible when classifying recycled products, thus reducing their variability.
5. Sales of recycled products
The recovered products can be put into the market after being repaired or restored. Like the supply and demand of ordinary products, if an enterprise intends to sell recycled products, it needs to analyze the market demand first, so as to decide whether to sell in the existing market or open up new markets. On this basis, enterprises can make sales decisions and sell recycled products, thus completing a reverse logistics cycle.
Reverse logistics measures such as resource recovery and resource reuse can bring tangible benefits to logistics enterprises and become new profit sources for logistics enterprises. According to western scholars' estimation, the current global reverse logistics market is as high as 20 billion dollars. However, in China, reverse logistics has not been fully developed, and it is only limited to the primary behaviors such as recycling of waste materials and sorting of domestic garbage, and its economic benefits are not obvious. China's reverse logistics work is basically carried out under the organization of the government, and reverse logistics activities as enterprises' own behavior are rare.