As e-commerce grows, tackling its environmental impacts, including those of packaging, becomes increasingly challenging. This study explores the benefits of reusable industrial packaging systems in the e-commerce industry, addressing ecological and financial perspectives. We contribute by formulating a generalized balancing problem for returnable transport items (RTIs) and developing a discrete-event simulation model and a heuristic to solve the problem. One methodological novelty is our modeling of network nodes that are simultaneously senders and recipients of RTIs. By applying the methodology to a case study of a large European e-commerce retailer, we address the need for industry-specific empirical studies comparing single-use and reusable packaging and RTI management in e-commerce.

中文翻译：

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推进电子商务包装的可持续性：管理可回收运输物品的模拟研究


随着电子商务的发展，解决其对环境的影响（包括包装对环境的影响）变得越来越具有挑战性。本研究探讨了可重复使用的工业包装系统在电子商务行业中的好处，涉及生态和财务角度。我们通过为可回收运输物品 （RTI） 制定广义平衡问题并开发离散事件仿真模型和启发式方法来解决问题。一种方法上的新颖之处在于我们对同时是 RTI 的发送者和接收者的网络节点进行建模。通过将该方法应用于一家大型欧洲电子商务零售商的案例研究，我们解决了对特定行业进行实证研究的需求，以比较电子商务中的一次性和可重复使用包装以及 RTI 管理。