Abstract
Balancing economic development with environmental protection has become a critical concern worldwide. However, along with the highly competitively global marketplace, economic factors are known to directly affect an enterprise’s development and its future business. Therefore, selecting the right partner for sustainable collaboration that will lead to improved business performance and reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is a significant problem for many enterprises. In addition, investigating the economic impact of companies that are charged to protect the environment is becoming increasingly problematic. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the comparative efficiencies of 16 Green Logistics Providers (GLPs) in the USA from 2012 to 2015, and the projected four-year period of 2016–2019, by means of an integrated approach that combines the grey forecasting model GM (1,1) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The results show that there are two GLPs, Knight Transportation and the Union Pacific Corporation, that possess a higher efficiency level and are achieving positive technical change. However, this study also determined that Hyster-Yale Materials Handling and CSX Corporation did not reach an acceptable efficiency score; therefore, they should improve technical efficiency to mitigate environmental concerns. This completely integrative methodology has the potential to provide the best decision-making strategies for finding suitable collaborative partners who are able to meet the sustainability requirements in most economic and environmental areas.
Highlights
Logistics providers play an increasingly important role in maintaining business competitiveness and sustainability, as well as demonstrating social responsibility [1]
The way forward begins by recognizing that the logistics industry itself is a major source of CO2 emissions, accounting for a 13.1% portion of global greenhouse gas emissions
This study selects the total assets of DMU2 (Werner Enterprises, Inc.) as an example (Table 1) to describe the computation process; likewise, other variables are calculated in the same way
Summary
Logistics providers play an increasingly important role in maintaining business competitiveness and sustainability, as well as demonstrating social responsibility [1]. The U.S Environmental Protection Agency [2] estimated that nearly 26% of all greenhouse emissions in 2014 resulted from transportation and logistical activities. The logistics industry as a whole has demonstrated its concern to be of equal strategic involvement in achieving lowered CO2 emissions while sustaining positive economic development. The way forward begins by recognizing that the logistics industry itself is a major source of CO2 emissions, accounting for a 13.1% portion of global greenhouse gas emissions. In an effort to tackle global warming issues, the logistics industry has proposed implementing and enforcing consistent environmental measures, especially in the U.S logistics industry [3]
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