Environmental effects of coordination of return policies

Details

Supervisors

Agrell, Per Joakim

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] : ingénieur de gestion, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

This master thesis investigates the impact of the environment on the coordination of supply chain contracts. Nowadays, beverage producers are encouraged to use reusable bottles rather than single-use bottles. As single-use bottles are recycled, it takes a lot of resources to make a new bottle from the remains of a previous one. Reusing the bottles, instead of producing new ones, could limit the problem of resource use and thus generate less pollution. However, reusing the bottles may require a large initial investment on the part of the company. These investments can be made either by subcontracting the processing of bottles to another company or by investing in a system that allows the processing of bottles directly at the beverage producer. Smaller beverage producers are often very reluctant to make this kind of investment because it can require a lot of transportation and generate more costs.This thesis studies the possible pricing of reusable bottles and sees which case can be more profitable for the brewery to reuse the bottles. These cases are not to return the bottles and to buy new ones, to process the bottles by subcontracting and finally to process the bottles directly at the brewery.