Understanding Retail Supply Chains to Enable ‘greener’ Logistics

Introduction Over the past 30 years, there have been many urban freight surveys undertaken by local authorities across the UK, in an attempt to understand freight issues at the local level (Allen et al., 2008). Many of these focused on the supply chains delivering ‘core’ goods to retailers whilst some made an attempt to go further and quantify the impacts of service vehicle activity to gain a more complete picture of freight vehicle impacts serving our central business districts. This paper describes the findings from a business managers survey undertaken with retailers in Winchester High Street in 2008 (n=83, 69%), designed to quantify the logistics associated with the supply of core goods, material take-back (customer returns, stock transfers, WEEE, residual waste and recyclate) and other services. The findings are set in context with other surveys that have been undertaken to highlight the characteristics of Winchester and aid understanding in what new and novel systems might bring about a more sustainable approach to managing freight in an urban setting.