Jonathan Lozano-Oviedo, Cristián E. Cortés & Pablo A. Rey
Abstract
Sustainability and the circular economy have become indispensable attributes of the supply chains of any industry or field of action in the effort to prevent damage to the environment and its negative economic and social impacts. Currently, most supply chains have focused on maximizing economic returns, neglecting the environmental and social impacts generated from the acquisition/processing of raw materials until the supply of products in the market and the post-consumer stage. An emerging alternative for achieving these attributes is the sustainable closed-loop supply chain (SCLSC). This paper offers a critical review of the literature on SCLSCs, their formulation as mathematical problems and the associated optimization models. No literature reviews were found with the focus, structure, and scope proposed in the present article, given that most publications associated with SCLSCs have a focus on the managerial perspective, including different topics, such as green supply chains, sustainable linear supply chains, reverse logistics management, collaborative practices, qualitative reviews of the effects of sustainability and circular economy. This review aims to identify gaps in the existing studies and the consequent opportunities for advancing the frontier of knowledge in future research on SCLSC optimization. We find that although studies for various specific industries that propose SCLSC optimization models have been published, they focus mainly on the economic and environmental dimensions of sustainability and with varying degrees of success, generally neglecting the social dimension. Furthermore, not all the technical cycles of the circular economy are dealt with in the literature in sufficient depth or detail, and, overall, the proposed models do not consider frameworks of reference in terms of economic, environmental, and social sustainability.
