Sustainable forward-reverse logistics for multi-product delivery and pickup in B2C E-commerce towards the circular economy

The circular economy is an important part of sustainable business around the world. Accordingly, this study focuses on developing a sustainable framework for multi-echelon multiple electronics products' closed-loop supply chain in the e-commerce industry toward the circular economy. The proposed framework captures the complexities associated with forward and reverse logistics. The order is picked up from the supplier and delivered to the customer in the forward flow. Return products are picked up from customer locations and delivered to the inspection centre in the reverse flow. During the inspection process, products are classified into three categories: Reselling, Refurbishing, and Recycling (3R). The products that can be resold, refurbished, and recycled are then delivered to their respective final destinations, i.e., the supplier's warehouse, the refurbishing centre, and the recycling centre, respectively. A mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model is developed to reduce total cost and maximize revenue associated with the forward and reverse flow of goods in a closed-loop supply chain while prioritising sustainability. To achieve this, a global solver in the LINGO 19 package software is used to solve and generate the exact solutions of the model. We have conducted 15 computational experiments for small-to-medium-to-large-sized problems to test the model. A sensitivity analysis is also performed to analyze the effect on total expected revenue from sustainable Closed-loop Supply Chain (CLSC) of variations in the major parameters of the model. Policymakers can use the obtained results and perform sensitivity analysis to make effective and efficient strategies favouring consumers and companies that could help enhance the country's economy.