The Concept of Reverse Logistics. a Review of Literature

This paper aims at providing a review of Reverse Logistics concept from a broad set of articles, published mainly in the last decade. From their reading, the author has detected the lack of a desirable largely accepted consensus on what constitutes Reverse Logistics, either on what the range of activities should be included within its scope or how to denominate each of its options in a not fuzzy way. The clarification of the concept matters for several reasons. On the one hand, most of the so called, environmental regulations -which have been passed in a growing manner, in recent years and in many parts of the worldusually mention some objectives to be reached in certain periods of time, in relation to some of the Reverse Logistics activities (being perhaps the most common one, recycling targets). Given that not only consumers, but also both companies and municipalities are committed with these goals, it would be handy and desirable to have a clear idea of what is meant by each denomination and the implications that