A systematic review in recycling/reusing/re-manufacturing supply chain research: a tertiary study

ABSTRACT

The present work presents a review of literature reviews in the area of recycling/reusing/re-manufacturing supply chain research. It also highlights the contribution of the review papers published in this area. To collect the sample, we use the well-reputed search engine: SCOPUS and then screening it categorically and descriptively to finalise the sample for the study. A category, impact, and topic-related classification schemes are developed, and the 67 review works existed in our final sample are discussed in the light of these classification schemes. Sustainability has three different facets: environmental, economic, and social. Achieving sustainability for enhancing the quality of the environment, cost-effective economic concern, and benefit of society is the priority in most of the articles. The study identifies several emerging issues like ways of utilisation of food and vegetable waste, ways of collection of rare earth metals from secondary sources, integration of reverse and forward supply chain, sustainable smart and flexible production system, etc., to give higher preferences for future research. The classification framework presented in this article may assist researchers to realise research gaps and help them in writing high-quality research work in the future.

KEYWORDS:

• Recycling
• reuse
• re-manufacturing
• supply chain
• review
• tertiary study

1. Introduction

Consumption of natural resources has been increased significantly with the population explosion around the world. They are recently trying to assess the resource-saving potential of the supply chain to expand the life span of the resources by the activities of reuse, reduction, recycle and re-manufacturing. Facing dangerous situations, triple ‘R’s (Recycling, Reuse, and Re-manufacturing) in the supply chain are very important for reducing GHG emission, increasing sustainability, restoring natural wealth thus keeping the Earth green and clean. Recycling is a process that converts the used material into usable after processing. Waste recycling can help to solve the problem of scarcity of raw materials. Recycling rare earth metals plays a significant role in reverse logistics (Swain and Mishra 2019). There is a very subtle difference between ‘Recycling’ and ‘Reuse’. Through recycling, initially, raw materials are extracted from used products that may be used to make the same or new product. ‘Reuse’ is meant for using an object without any reprocessing or treatment; it only elongates the life of an object. At present, Gothenburg in Sweden run five recycling centres one of which is specified for reuse. It is calculated that if all the five centres would be engaged only for the reuse, 2200 tons of waste are to be reduced every year which is equivalent to 800 tons of CO2 (Ordóñez et al. 2019). Re-manufacturing is not the same as Recycling or Reuse. It is the comprehensive industrial process which is defined as the combination of rebuilding, reuse, repair, and uses of new parts. Medical equipment, electrical and electronic equipment, and printing equipment are some of the common areas for re-manufacturing. Akçcal et al. (2011) pointed out the challenges in the re-manufacturing process and suggested that these factors should be considered in framing inventory and production planning in closed-loop supply chain management. Triple-R supply chain (TRSC) plays a vital role in rising sustainability (Modak, Panda, and Sana 2016). Generally, the cost of a new product from raw materials is more than remanufactured products (Panda, Modak, and Cárdenas-Barrón 2017). So, the use of end-of-life products has become a vital business issue today. It provides a major economic opportunity to the manufacturers.

A tertiary study is useful to explore a topic when there is a large number of primary and secondary research articles published on that topic. Several research publications on a variety of emerging topics are analysed through tertiary studies like supply chain sustainability (Martins and Pato 2019), software engineering (Cruzes and Dybå 2011), lot-sizing problem (Glock, Grosse, and Ries 2014), machine scheduling problems in production (Abedinnia et al. 2017), agile software development (Hoda et al. 2017). The substantial number of TRSC original research papers (primary studies) have already generated a considerable number of literature reviews (secondary studies). Literature reviews are imperative to gain a better knowledge of a research topic. It helps to depict which research issues have already been addressed, and how, and which are the emerging research topics. The present study is inspired by the rich number of secondary studies in TRSC literature. The motive is to present a review analysis of the existing literature reviews on TRSC. Note that, a review of secondary studies is denoted as tertiary study. Present work contributes to the literature by providing an ample and organised view of the existing TRSC secondary research works.

In this paper, we analyse review papers on TRSC through a systematic review process under a structured framework. The purpose of this study is to extract which areas of research emerged and which key realisations have been achieved in the respective areas. Thus, this tertiary study provides an in-depth analysis of the review papers on TRSC and identified research gaps, and trending research areas for future research directions. The purpose of this paper is to find out that (1) which are the literature reviews on TRSC? (2) What are their formal review features? (3) Is there any growth in the number of reviews per year during the last two decades? (4) Which journals are leading in terms of quantity and quality of TRSC publications? (5) Which reviews on TRSC received the highest number of citations? (6) Which research topics are most discussed and are given utmost importance to encourage/promote reuse-recycling-remanufacturing in supply chain management? (7) Which reviews have highlighted environmental, social, and economic impacts? (8) Which type of business sectors are addressed by the reviews on TRSC? (9) How have the existing reviews addressed different issues to increase economic, social, and environmental sustainability?

The present tertiary study contributes to the literature in the following ways. It is the very first such study that appraisals the literature reviews on TRSC. It classifies and discusses the literature reviews based on review types, areas of economic, social, and environmental impact, and some other highly emerging research issues. It examined information, methodology, and success stories illustrated by different authors. This work is likely to have numerous assistances to readers and the researcher working on the TRSC topic. This study can clear up the directions of the topic have taken since the first publication and the nature of studies that have been received high attention. Furthermore, researchers who aim to work their future research into TRSC can have inclusive information on the type of existing review studies, and the research gaps that remain.

We arrange the rest of the papers as follows. The methodology of the tertiary study has been described in the second section. This is followed by a detailed content analysis in Section 3. Through the classification under different categories, section 3 presents a discussion on the major findings of the review papers that were recognised in this survey. Finally, section 4 summarises the key findings and provides suggestions for future research.

2. Methods and results

In our article, we are in search of sustainability; sustainability of the environment, sustainability of economy, and sustainability of the society. Three R(s) guided us throughout the path; recycling, reusing, and re-manufacturing. We have searched the existing literature with this in mind. We examined information, methodology, and success stories illustrated by different authors. We use the SCOPUS database to collect information about those publications which have used ‘Supply Chain’, Recycling, Reuse, and Re-manufacturing as keywords in the title and/or abstract (TITLE-ABS-KEY). It is a commonly used and reliable database for scientific publications. SCOPUS covers 22,794 active titles and 13,583 inactive titles in its database. The search engine SCOPUS reveals a total of 3044 published documents up to the year 2019. Table 1 presents the details of the document selection procedure.

Table 1. Document selection procedure

Database	SCOPUS
Search Criteria	S.1 Language: English S.2 Scientific areas(s): All S.3 Source type: Journal S.4 Article type(s): Review S.5 Search field(s): Title, abstract and keywords S.6 Date of publication: Up to the year 2019 S.7 Date of search: 22 June 2020
Search Terms	T.1 ‘Supply Chain’ AND ‘Recycling’ T.2 ‘Supply Chain’ AND ‘Reuse’ T.3 ‘Supply Chain’ AND ‘Re-manufacturing’ T.4 ‘Supply Chain’ AND ‘Recycling’ AND/OR ‘Reuse’ AND/OR ‘Re-manufacturing’
Search Results	R.1 Keywords Search: 3044 documents R.2 Limit to English language, Journal article and review: 1683 documents R.3 Limit to Review: 77 documents R.4 After screening content and excluding irrelevant documents: 67 documents

Out of the 3044 documents, we consider 1683 documents by limiting the search result to language: ‘English’, source type: ‘Journal’ and document types: ‘article’ & ‘review’. Out of the 1683 documents, 77 papers are labelled as review work by the database. But, after studying each of those 77 papers carefully screening we remove 10 papers, which are not exactly related and fitted for our study. In this way, we consider 67 review papers for this tertiary study. The first review paper was published in the year 2000, and the trend line in Figure 1 is showing consistent growth in the number of reviews per year.

Figure 1. Number of review paper published per year

Note that, 4.57% of documents out of the 1683 journal documents are review papers. The most fifteen reviews were published in the year 2019 followed by the year 2017, which has nine reviews. Thirty reviews, i.e. 44.77% of the total reviews published during the last 3 years (2017 to 2019). Figure 1 also shows that initial review papers are more concentrated on reverse logistics related issues. But recent concerns have been shifted on the sustainability and its implementation in various business sectors. Sixty-seven review papers that are considered for this study are published in 47 different journals. Out of those 47 journals, 38 journals have only one publication and 5 journals have two publications. Journal of Cleaner Production has the most seven reviews, followed by the International Journal of Production Research which has five publications. California Management Review has four reviews while the journal Resource, conservation, and Recycling has three reviews.

Figure 2 shows the top nine journals which have more than one publication. Figure 3 presents top eight journals based on citations.

Figure 2. Number of reviews published per journal

Figure 3. Leading journals based on citations

California Management Review has the most number of citations followed by Journal of Environmental Management which has only one publication. The journal Energy and Environmental Science gets the third position although it has only one publication. Five reviews of International Journal of Production Research have accumulated total 390 citations and assure fourth position in the figure. Seven reviews of Journal of Cleaner Production have total 217 citations. Table 2 presents the top 10 most cited reviews.

Table 2. Top 10 influential reviews

Rank	Papers	Citations	Citation/year	Journal
1	Ilgin and Gupta (2010)	649	72.1	Journal of Environmental Management
2	Lin et al. (2013)	501	83.5	Energy and Environmental Science
3	Blackburn et al. (2004)	299	19.9	California Management Review
4	Tibben-Lembke and Rogers (2002)	232	13.64	Supply Chain Management: An International Journal
5	Olivetti et al. (2017)	202	101	Joule
6	Williams et al. (2008)	194	17.6	Environmental Science and Technology
7	Krikke, Le Blanc, and Van De Velde (2004)	180	12	California Management Review
8	Geyer and Jackson (2004)	157	10.5	California Management Review
9	Dowlatshahi (2005)	143	10.2	Int. Journal of Production Research
10	Akçcal and Çetinkaya (2011)	142	17.7	Int. Journal of Production Research

Table 2 has three papers from the California Management Review and two papers from the International Journal of Production Research. The three papers of California Management Review are published in a special issue named ‘Supply Chain Management’ in the year 2004. This special issue had a total of 141 pages and it had eight articles. The theme of this issue was focused on recycling, re-manufacturing, and reverse supply chain management. This issue published some great articles with many new ideas during the initial stage of the literature of recycling/reusing/re-manufacturing supply chain. These articles help a lot to cultivate this research field during the one and a half decades (2005–2019). Ilgin and Gupta (2010) lead Table 2 with 649 citations followed by Lin et al. (2013) which also has more than 500 citations. The leading article was published in the Journal of Environmental Management while the second one was published in the journal Energy and Environmental Science. Ilgin and Gupta (2010) highlight the themes like environment-friendly product designing, reverse logistics, and remanufacturing which helps it to attract the highest number of citations. The pioneering work of Tibben-Lembke and Rogers (2002) established basic ideas about the forward and reverse logistics in the supply chain. This work highly contributed to establishing the need and importance of reverse logistics in the supply chain during the very beginning of the twenty-first century. Research on the Lithium-ion battery supply chain conducted by Olivetti et al. (2017) has the most citation receiving rate in Table 1. Keyword mining of the database provides a clear picture of research topics and trends related to recycling/reusing/re-manufacturing supply chain research. Other than the document searching keywords (Recycling, Supply Chains, Review), the following keywords are arising with significant frequency: Sustainable Development (17 times), Waste Management (17 times), Environmental Impact (13 times), Sustainability (12 times), Reverse Logistics (11 times), Life Cycle (10 times), Waste Disposal (10 times). Figure 4 presents the co-occurrence of keywords using the Visualisation of Similarities (VOS) viewer software.

Figure 4. Co-occurrence of keywords

Figure 4 helps to figure out the bonding among the keywords in this research field. Figure 4 has three major clusters (red, green, and blue). Red cluster is dominated by the keywords like Reverse Logistics, Re-manufacturing, Logistics, Life cycle, Planning, Optimisation, Industry, Costs, and Decision-Making, etc. Green cluster is leading by the keywords like Recycling, Supply Chains, Waste Management, Review, Solid Waste, and Waste Disposal. Blue cluster is leading by keywords like Supply Chain Management, Sustainable Development, Environmental Impact, Sustainability, and Circular economy. Clearly, these three clusters have highlighted three different segments of research areas. Red, Blue, and Green clusters respectively major themes related to reverse logistics, sustainable development, and waste management.

3. Tertiary study

This section presents a complete study of all 67 review articles which are found and selected from the SCOPUS database. Classification of the review papers is presented in table a (please see appendix). The next subsection discusses the patterns/types of the review articles published during the last two decades on recycling/reusing/re-manufacturing supply chain research.

3.1. Types of reviews

We have gone through the 67 review articles and classify types of reviews into three categories, namely Systematic Literature Review, Case Study/Survey and Systematic Content Analysis. The following picture (see Figure 5) will clear the total scenario about the complete review status of the research papers taken into account.

Figure 5. Types of review articles

3.1.1. Analysis of systematic literature review publications

In the review paper, Ilgin and Gupta (2010) explored the area of Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing and Product Recovery. After going through more than 540 published papers they divided the entire field into four major categories namely, generation of eco-friendly products, re-manufacturing, reverse logistics in closed-loop supply chains (CLSC), and disassembly, and finally, conclude that there exists a large scope of research opportunity in this field yet to be explored. Williams et al. (2008) emphasised the social, economic, and environmental impact of personal computers. They doubt the improper landfilling of e-waste and express fears for the deterioration of the environment. Quariguasi-Frota-Neto and Bloemhof (2012) examined the effectiveness of remanufacturing of personal computers and mobile phone.

Companies should stress the reconciling of the reverse supply chain along with the forward supply chain. Akçcal et al. (2011) elaborately discussed production planning problem of CLSC. They categorised the inventory problem into stochastic and deterministic types according to the demand and return process. Xu et al. (2018) stressed anaerobic digestion of food waste. Beamon (2005) focussed on ethical responsibility of the engineers. Sasikumar and Kannan (2008) studied the recovery of end-of-life products in the supply chain loop. Different parameters of Radio frequency identification (RFID) in the food industry have been explored by Kumar et al. (2009). Keegan et al. (2013) stressed to design a policy mechanism for the sustainable use of biomass to encourage its environmental and economic effects. Stindt and Sahamie (2014) tried to prepare a structured database in the process industry of CLSC.

The concept of multi-agent architecture has been introduced by Mishra, Kumar, and Chan (2012) for smooth the running of the reverse logistics process. Nikolopoulou and Ierapetritou (2012) reviewed some research papers on different aspects of sustainable processes applied in supply chain management. Limitations and opportunities in this regard are also discussed by the authors. Lüdeke-Freund, Gold, and Bocken (2019) have done a morphological analysis of 26 current circular economy business models (CEBM) and concluded six major CEBM patterns. Silva, de Brito, and Dhir (2017) discussed the recycled aggregates of waste particles in the construction life cycle. Vieira and Horvath (2008) discussed about the usefulness of end-of-life product. Bartl (2014) made a literature review on waste generation. Ciccullo et al. (2018) reviewed 73 papers highlighted the paradigms of supply chain management. They stressed six types of indicators of supply chain paradigms, integration of which are very important. Meneses, Stratton, and Flores (2017) focussed on the plenty uses of freshwater in food processing industry and suggested for reconditioning and reuse to encourage water conservation initiatives.

Singh et al. (2012) prepared a literature review on vegetable waste. Nascimento et al. (2019) discussed sustainability in supply chain management along with additive manufacturing. Steeneck and Sarin (2013) explored re-manufacturing in the reverse supply chain model and compared the pricing policy between the new product and remanufactured product. Fibre wastes obtained from the textile industry are talked out by Pensupa et al. (2017). Ghosh et al. (2016) explored waste of electrical and electronic equipment in the context of five countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa known as BRICS. Swain and Mishra (2019) enlightened on the extraction process of transition metals and rare earth elements from secondary resources to make the environment green and clean. Scheuermann and Leukel (2014) studied the effects of ontology engineering in supply chain management.

Saqib et al. (2019) noticed that hydrothermal carbonisation may be very useful technique in the utilisation of food wastes. Based on 191 papers from 2000 to 30 June 2018 of Scopus and Web of Science Salim et al. (2019) framed a systematic literature review on the solar energy system. Correlation of supply chain management and product design is highlighted by Yao and Askin (2019). Tanwer, Prajapati, and Singh (2015) explored environmentally conscious manufacturing from 1995 to 2013 and framed a literature review reinforcing environmental performance in manufacturing industries.

Computer and television have a major role in generating e-waste. Akcil, Agcasulu, and Swain (2019) derived the literature review considering e-waste of LCD panel from the above electronic devices. They observed that indium is easily available in the LCD panel as the compound of indium-di-oxide but in nature, it is very difficult to obtain. Therefore, recycling is very effective to recover indium. Studying 145 papers, Rajeev., Pati, and Padhi (2019) explored the strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat of a supply chain in the chemical industries. Kaur and Awasthi (2018) derived a systematic literature review to discuss the inconvenience in the field of green supply chain management. After the selection of 27 papers among 11,000 Goldstein and Newell (2019) attempted to find out the correlation between individual corporations in the supply chain and different social activities. Tungsten extraction process is discussed by Shen et al. (2019). Nikmaram and Rosentrater (2019) observed that food processing industries have an adverse environmental impact. Malladi and Sowlati (2018) presented an extensive analysis of the inventory routing problem keeping in mind its sustainability issue. They studied 40 articles chosen from the Web of Science and Google Scholar database and considered two types of models – single- and multi-objective models. In the single-objective model, they discussed various sides such as reverse logistics, controlling and lessening of waste, reducing carbon emission, etc. According to the authors, reverse logistics not only study waste collections and storage but also highlights the extraction of usable things and proper planning of disposal strategy. They also noticed that the number of articles considering the multi-objective model is very few. The objective of these types of models is to minimise the total emission.

Recycling of primary resources is receiving attention recently. Wang et al. (2017) explored the resource recycling industry by the extensive study of 7041 published papers in the Web of Science from 1996 to 2018. Truong et al. (2019) emphasised the recent status of food waste management. Mohamed, Saman, and Sharif (2017) discussed quality assurance of the re-manufacturing of end-of-life (EOL) vehicles . Millis, Chan, and Wallace (2019) assessed the construction status of the highly developed and densely populated city of Hong Kong. They reinforced the recycled aggregates in the supply chain along with planned excavations.

Online trading has changed the business conception packaging pattern. The form of packaging is changed with the pace of time. Giordano (2017) presented a predictive model in which they stressed the flow of sustainable material in the production process. Dwyer (2005) highlighted the welfare work of a charitable society Remploy. It is a completely novel side not yet explored. The company ensures to provide a job for the injured and disabled ex-serviceman. It has several types of business attitude special emphasis is given on the manufacturing items such as furniture, health care, toiletries, etc. They try to fulfil their commitment to the ex-serviceman through employment from their profit of such business. Kalela (2002) studied the Finnish and Nordic forest industry. In the supply chain, this industry plays a vital role in providing a structured and shielded packaging system for food and beverages.

3.1.2. Analysis of case study publications

After careful study, we observe that there are eight papers (Ritchie et al. 2000, Geyer and Jackson 2004; Dowlatshahi 2005; Wang and Sun 2005; Golinska and Kawa 2011; Lin et al. 2013; Kara, Ibbotson, and Kayis 2014; Ferron and Henry 2015) highlighting the case study. We discuss them one by one. We are watching that lot of initiative has recently been started to save the world’s current natural resources. Various restrictions have been imposed on the indiscriminate use of primary resources. So, value extraction from different kinds of waste has become very important factor today. By performing the worldwide case study, Lin et al. (2013) tried to enlighten the proper, innovative and useful way in the execution of food waste by giving examples of citrus oil, waste cooking oil, etc. They focus towards the better and advanced level of utilisation of food waste than its traditional uses, namely redistribution, incineration, etc. Lin et al. (2013) point out that food wastes may become an effective and valuable resource for production of chemicals, materials and fuels, etc. Geyer and Jackson (2004) stressed on reuse and recycle of EOL products and concluded that lack of data is one of the biggest barriers in framing supply loops. They insisted on industrial ecology mainly through the practices of recycling and reuse of structural steel sections obtained from the EOL construction sectors in the United Kingdom. Dowlatshahi (2005) designed and implemented the strategy of reverse logistics from the perspective of current literature and present situation. Ritchie et al. (2000) discussed reverse logistics, i.e. recycling and reuse of pharmaceutical goods after analysing the returned stocks of 28 hospitals. They observe that National Health Service as well as the other organisations gains benefits for the reverse logistics of pharmaceuticals products in the Manchester Royal Infirmary for recycling process of those products. A detailed study of 330 organisations across 13 countries had been implemented by Kara, Ibbotson, and Kayis (2014) to encourage environmental awareness by sustainable product development. An important observation between the relationship of the size, shape, type, capacity of the firms with its geographical locations has been explored by Kara, Ibbotson, and Kayis (2014). It has been observed that although in some area sustainability initiative has significantly been initiated but in most of the areas it is still in its infancy. Various aspects of reverse logistics by the method of a qualitative and quantitative case study are discussed by Wang and Sun (2005). Golinska and Kawa (2011) shed light on the challenges and limitations of reverse flow of materials for remanufacturing in the automotive industry. They point out to some barriers of supplied materials such as sufficient amount, quality and uncertainty in timely supply. They suggest that the agent-based applied technology may solve the problem in many ways. They also apply simulation technique to balance the stochastic demand and supply of EOL vehicles. An extensive review of manufacturing and re-manufacturing had been done by the authors. Ferron and Henry (2015) reinforced the recycling of rare earth metals and performed a case study in this regard by gathering information from various industries. They tried to enlist the names of rare earth metals for recycling and describe its role for clean society. They also stress to find the potential resources of those metals and opine that there exist technical and non-technical challenges of availability and recycling process.

3.1.3. Review of systematic analysis publications

A systematic analysis explains a comprehensive and extensive discussion of different aspects of the latest research articles. It also focuses on the current development and recent progress of a particular topic, points out the research gap in this regard and enlightens the future directions of research. Researchers are very interested in exploring the dimension of the reverse flow of products. Reverse supply chain plays an important role to reduce marginal cost. Blackburn et al. (2004) stressed the speed of returning products as time is very significant. Tibben-Lembke and Rogers (2002) highlighted the pros and cons of forward and backward logistics and reinforced the reverse flow of product from the point of view of the firm. A systematic analysis of the comparison of extended producer responsibility (EPR) of the four countries namely Japan, Germany, Switzerland and China had been done by Wang et al. (2017). After a thorough analysis, the authors explored a new side of the EPR system on the proper usages of wastes from electrical and electronic equipment. Yu et al. (2016) elaborately discussed the characteristics of various etching solutions. They also compared various etching processes and observed that electrolytic methods and membrane technology were better than the other methods in respect of regeneration technologies. Garcia and Hora (2017) sketched a complete picture about recycling and energy generation of waste wood. For this, they explored the waste wood industries in different European countries. Olivetti et al. (2017) presented a systematic analysis on the essential minerals of the lithium-ion battery (LIB) supply chain and discussed importance of reuse, recycling, and re-manufacturing for a source of future materials for LIBs. Krikke, Le Blanc, and Van De Velde (2004) demonstrated detailed analysis on the design of CLSC. Their analysis depicted three things (matching of the returned product, modular reuse, and particulars of reuse information), which are important behind the smooth running of a CLSC. Mishra, Kumar, and Chan (2012) addressed different features of recycling, for example, waste classification, recycling, logistics and reuse of products in green supply chain. Peng et al. (2018) highlighted the sustainability of additive manufacturing and suggested to encourage more research on sustainability in this regard. Matthews (2004) designed packaging material supply chain considering waste management, reuse, re-manufacturing, and recycling. To achieve the goals of sustainability in chemical production and consumption, a strategy for sustainable chemistry has been discussed by Steinhäuser et al. (2004). Testa et al. (2017) critically analysed the recycling process of glass manufacturing in different areas of Italy. It is observed that southern and central Italy has to go a far way to fulfil the target set by European legislation. The authors also have given some suggestion to improve the uses of municipal waste of glass manufacturing. Bressi et al. (2019) carried out systematic data analysis from the literature review on the reuse and recycle of crumb rubber by-product of tyre rubber which is very useful for road asphalt pavement. They presented the different characteristics of crumb rubber such as rubber particle size, temperatures, etc. Facchini et al. (2018) highlighted the reuse and regeneration of food waste and tried to explore the valorisation of food waste. They also observed that a very small portion of food waste is recovered and redistributed to the original system. Rothenberg and Becker (2003) analysed the environmental impact of the mid-size company Pictorial Offset Corporation Firm as it adopted the ISO certification. Table 3 presents the reviews according to the types of reviews.

Table 3. Published reviews according to types of reviews

Types of Reviews	Reviews
Case Study	Lin et al. (2013), Geyer and Jackson (2004), Dowlatshahi (2005), Ritchie et al. (2000), Kara, Ibbotson, and Kayis (2014), Wang and Sun (2005), Golinska and Kawa (2011),Ferron and Henry (2015)
Systematic Literature Review	Ilgin and Gupta (2010), Williams et al. (2008), Akccal et al (2011), Sasikumar and Kannan (2008), Kumar et al. (2009), Stindt and Sahamie (2014), Quariguasi-Frota-Neto and Bloemhof (2012), Nikolopoulou and Ierapetritou (2012), Lüdeke-Freund, Gold, and Bocken (2019), Silva, de Brito, and Dhir (2017), Arnette, Brewer, and Choal (2014), Vieira and Horvath (2008), Bartl (2014), Ciccullo et al. (2018), Singh et al. (2012), Nascimento et al. (2019), Steeneck and Sarin (2013), Pensupa et al. (2017), Ghosh et al. (2016), Swain and Mishra (2019), Scheuermann and Leukel (2014),Wang and Sun (2005), Meneses, Stratton, and Flores (2017), Golinska and Kawa (2011), Jena and Sarmah (2016), Saqib et al. (2019),Salim et al. (2019), Malladi and Sowlati (2018), Yao and Askin (2019), Tanwer, Prajapati, and Singh (2015), Akcil, Agcasulu, and Swain (2019), Rajeev., Pati, and Padhi (2019), Kaur and Awasthi (2018), Goldstein and Newell (2019), Shen et al. (2019), Nikmaram and Rosentrater (2019), Wang et al. (2019), Truong et al. (2019), Millis, Chan, and Wallace (2019), Mohamed, Saman, and Sharif (2017), Kalela (2002)
Systematic Content Analysis	Blackburn et al. (2004), Tibben-Lembke and Rogers (2002), Olivetti et al. (2017), Krikke, Le Blanc, and Van De Velde (2004), Mishra, Kumar, and Chan (2012), Peng et al. (2018), Wang et al. (2017), Matthews (2004), Yu et al. (2016), Steinhäuser et al. (2004), Testa et al. (2017), Garcia and Hora (2017), Bressi et al. (2019), Facchini et al. (2018), Rothenberg and Becker (2003)

3.2. Reverse logistics

Reverse logistics include triple ‘R’-reuse, recycle and re-manufacturing. Beamon (2005) thought that consideration of ethics is very important in every aspect of our society. If ethics is not included, all the efforts regarding environmental concern will be in vain. Sasikumar and Kannan (2008) mentioned that product recovery of EOL is a very monotonous, boring and prolonged process. After collecting the end of a product, it is to be scrutinised for a subject to reuse, recycling and re-manufacturing, etc. Arnette, Brewer, and Choal (2014) tried to explore the Design for Sustainability technique which includes the three basic ‘R’ reuse, re-manufacturing and recycling. They considered these as useful friends from the socio-economic and environmental perspectives. Lüdeke-Freund, Gold, and Bocken (2019) reinforced on the CEBM pattern like repair and maintenance; reuse and redistribution; refurbishment and re-manufacturing; recycling; cascading and repurposing; and organic feedstock business pattern and suggested some strategies to improve the CEBM. After a detailed and careful study, the author Geyer and Jackson (2004) reached the conclusion that recycles and reuse of EOL product can bring a massive change to the environment and economy. Recently, the continent of Asia, Europe, and North America become attentive in reusing of EOL products. Ritchie et al. (2000) emphasised their study on recycling and reuse of pharmaceutical goods. Table 4 displays reviews emphasised key issues of reverse logistics.

Table 4. Reviews highlighted reuse/recycling/re-manufacturing in reverse logistics

Issues highlighted in reverse logistics	Reviews
Reuse/Recovery	Lin et al. (2013), Blackburn et al. (2004), Williams et al. (2008), Krikke, Le Blanc, and Van De Velde (2004), Geyer and Jackson (2004), Sasikumar and Kannan (2008), Ritchie et al. (2000), Bartl (2014), Kara, Ibbotson, and Kayis (2014), Nascimento et al. (2019), Swain and Mishra (2019), Scheuermann and Leukel (2014), Wang and Sun (2005), Matthews (2004), Meneses, Stratton, and Flores (2017), Steinhäuser et al. (2004), Jena and Sarmah (2016), Testa et al. (2017), Bressi et al. (2019), Facchini et al. (2018), Nikmaram and Rosentrater (2019)
Recycling	Lin et al. (2013), Tibben-Lembke and Rogers (2002), Williams et al. (2008), Geyer and Jackson (2004), Dowlatshahi (2005), Sasikumar and Kannan (2008), Mishra, Kumar, and Chan (2012), Lüdeke-Freund, Gold, and Bocken (2019), Ritchie et al. (2000), Silva, de Brito, and Dhir (2017), Arnette, Brewer, and Choal (2014), Bartl (2014), Kara, Ibbotson, and Kayis (2014), Singh et al. (2012), Nascimento et al. (2019), Pensupa et al. (2017), Peng et al. (2018), Ghosh et al. (2016), Swain and Mishra (2019), Wang and Sun (2005), Yu et al. (2016), Ferron and Henry (2015), Steinhäuser et al. (2004), Garcia and Hora (2017), Jena and Sarmah (2016), Salim et al. (2019), Yao and Askin (2019), Testa et al. (2017), Bressi et al. (2019), Akcil, Agcasulu, and Swain (2019), Kaur and Awasthi (2018), Goldstein and Newell (2019), Shen et al. (2019),Wang et al. (2019), Truong et al. (2019), Millis, Chan, and Wallace (2019), Giordano (2017), Dwyer (2005). Kalela (2002)
Remanufacturing	Ilgin and Gupta (2010), Tibben-Lembke and Rogers (2002), Dowlatshahi (2005), Akccal et al (2011), Sasikumar and Kannan (2008), Kumar et al. (2009), Stindt and Sahamie (2014), Mishra, Kumar, and Chan (2012), Lüdeke-Freund, Gold, and Bocken (2019), Silva, de Brito, and Dhir (2017), Arnette, Brewer, and Choal (2014), Vieira and Horvath (2008), Singh et al. (2012), Steeneck and Sarin (2013), Wang and Sun (2005), Golinska and Kawa (2011), Garcia and Hora (2017), Tanwer, Prajapati, and Singh (2015), Mohamed, Saman, and Sharif (2017)

Reuse

Reuse is very effective to clean the environment of our surroundings. It encourages moving towards zero waste and zero emission with closing the economy. Reuse also mitigates the production cost of a new product with updated features. As a result, a large section of people will become benefitted due to the reduced cost price. Sustainability can be achieved by the recycling and reuse of e-waste obtained from the personal computers, mobile phones, electrical and electronics devices, etc. Williams et al. (2008) inferred that reuse and recycling the parts and components of computers can also boost the economy by reducing its production cost. Scrap materials such as e-waste, plastics, cast iron, etc., may endanger the ecosystem and harm the environment. Reuse may reduce these wastes and can save the ecosystem.

Recycling

Recycling is one of the most viable options to reuse the end of the product in the CLSC management (Yao and Askin 2019). It reduces environmental deterioration, creates business opportunities, eradicates the unemployment problem by introducing a third party for screening the parts obtained from EOL products and overall minimises the production cost by utilising those parts. It is studied that the recycling process may lessen 50% of its cost during the production of a computer. Recent research on the recycling process in the various sectors has significantly been increased. But above all, the success of the recycling process of different sectors depends on the awareness of the manufacturers and end users. In this context, it is to remember that the strategic option for recycling is very relevant.

Mishra, Kumar, and Chan (2012) discussed in detail the steps of reverse logistics such as recovery, differentiation and collection of used items and wastes for recycling and reusing. Vieira and Horvath (2008) concluded that an increase in the recycling process of substances in the construction of buildings affects heavily in lessening the emission of greenhouse gas. After a detailed study, Bartl (2014) observed that the recycling process is very effective as it does not absorb the primary resources but not an optimum option as it needs energy, produces wastes and there are many barriers and limitations to execute the process.

Some potential scraps namely spent Ni-metal hydride battery, magnets, polishing powders and phosphors, etc., are identified by Ferron and Henry (2015). After performing the case study based on the industry, they concluded that the success of recycling depends on technical advancement along with other factors. Akcil, Agcasulu, and Swain (2019) encouraged the recovery of indium from LCD. These metals are frequently used to run various instruments. For example, electric car batteries need rare earth metals whereas palladium is used to mitigate harmful exhaust of the car. Recently recycling of different types of wastes like fibre waste (Pensupa et al. 2017), wood waste (Garcia and Hora 2017), food and vegetable waste (Singh et al. 2012; Saqib et al. 2019; Lin et al. 2013; Facchini et al. 2018; Truong et al. 2019; Saqib et al. 2019; Nikmaram and Rosentrater 2019; Xu et al. 2018), tyre rubber (Bressi et al. 2019) has gained much attention to the researchers.

Testa et al. (2017) discussed cullet recycling in reverse supply chain loops. It is observed from the study that northern Italy has shown better performance in the recycling process than southern and central Italy. Nascimento et al. (2019) wanted to study the correlation of Industry 4.0 technologies with the circular economy. Giordano (2017) reinforced the process of recycling of brand owners’ and encouraged them to frame a repertory of eco-friendly and biodegradable plastics. Dwyer (2005) stressed the recycling of white goods and other items manufactured by the welfare society Remploy.

Re-manufacturing

The process of re-manufacturing has taken an important place in reverse logistics and supply chain management. The remanufactured product maintains the same quality as the new product with updated features. Re-manufacturing also helps to lessen the expenses of production as many parts can be reused. Several researchers have highlighted on the sustainable remanufacturing (Ilgin and Gupta (2010), Nikolopoulou and Ierapetritou (2012), Giordano (2017)). Different aspects (environmental, economic) of remanufacturing have been by Tibben-Lembke and Rogers (2002), Quariguasi-Frota-Neto and Bloemhof (2012), Steeneck and Sarin (2013).

Singh et al. (2012) developed a mathematical model in which they assumed that demand may be fulfiled from both the new products and remanufactured products. Used items are collected from the end users for re-manufacturing. They also stressed to take care of the coordination of production between new and remanufactured items. The pros and cons of re-manufacturing in the automotive industry had been studied by Golinska and Kawa (2011). The authors considered both traditional manufacturing as well as re-manufacturing. Both the raw materials and recovered material are used to run the production process. So, integration of the hybrid flow of materials is hard tasks keeping in mind its uncertainty, amount, timing, quality, etc. Jena and Sarmah (2016) framed a CLSC model in which they emphasised re-manufacturing after recovery of returned product.

3.3. Sustainability

Sustainability is very important for the next generation. It helps to keep primary resources for future generations after meeting the demand of the present hour. Sustainable development ensures to maintain the balance between environmental, economic and social development.

Sustainable product designing (Kara, Ibbotson, and Kayis 2014), sustainable product development (Bressi et al. 2019), smart production system by 4.0 technology (Nascimento et al. 2019) has been highlighted by some current researchers. Different manufacturers adopt different strategies to maintain sustainability in the production process according to their type, size, climate, environment, capacity, geographical location, etc. Olivetti et al. (2017) traced the area of sustainable energy research in the supply chain loops. They observed that an electric-powered vehicle is becoming very popular for its sustainable nature. Mapping of territory concentration of cobalt is essential as this metal is extremely dangerous for the environment. Rajeev., Pati, and Padhi (2019) explored problems, opportunities, challenges and possibilities of a sustainable supply chain in the chemical industries. They assumed that their exploration would help to show the future roadmap to increase sustainable development and to solve different issues in the chemical industry. Steinhäuser et al. (2004) presented an innovative and novel concept for sustainable chemistry. To achieve the desired goal in the sustainable chemistry, the authors mentioned some factors, namely (i) sustainable chemicals, (ii) sustainable chemical production and (iii) sustainable products. Kaur and Awasthi (2018) stressed the sustainable areas of green supply chain management and pointed out some barriers in this field. We consider the sustainability issue from three perspectives, namely (a) environmental perspective, (b) economic perspective and (c) social perspective. Table 5 presents reviews highlighted environmental/economic/social perspective of sustainability.

Table 5. Reviews highlighted environmental/economic/social perspective of sustainability

Sustainability	Reviews
Environmental	Williams et al. (2008), Geyer and Jackson (2004), Xu et al (2018), Beamon (2005), Sasikumar and Kannan (2008), Keegan et al. (2013), Quariguasi-Frota-Neto and Bloemhof (2012), Mishra, Kumar, and Chan (2012), Nikolopoulou and Ierapetritou (2012), Silva, de Brito, and Dhir (2017), Arnette, Brewer, and Choal (2014), Bartl (2014), Ciccullo et al. (2018), Kara, Ibbotson, and Kayis (2014), Nascimento et al. (2019), Peng et al. (2018), Wang et al. (2017), Wang and Sun (2005), Matthews (2004), Meneses, Stratton, and Flores (2017), Yu et al. (2016), Steinhäuser et al. (2004), Salim et al. (2019), Malladi and Sowlati (2018), Tanwer, Prajapati, and Singh (2015), Akcil, Agcasulu, and Swain (2019), Rajeev., Pati, and Padhi (2019), Kaur and Awasthi (2018), Goldstein and Newell (2019), Nikmaram and Rosentrater (2019),Wang et al. (2019), Giordano (2017), Rothenberg and Becker (2003), Saqib et al. (2019)
Social	Williams et al. (2008), Quariguasi-Frota-Neto and Bloemhof (2012), Nikolopoulou and Ierapetritou (2012), Arnette, Brewer, and Choal (2014), Ciccullo et al. (2018), Kara, Ibbotson, and Kayis (2014), Nascimento et al. (2019), Wang and Sun (2005), Malladi and Sowlati (2018), Kaur and Awasthi (2018)
Economic	Williams et al. (2008), Geyer and Jackson (2004), Keegan et al. (2013), Quariguasi-Frota-Neto and Bloemhof (2012), Nikolopoulou and Ierapetritou (2012), Arnette, Brewer, and Choal (2014), Silva, de Brito, and Dhir (2017), Kara, Ibbotson, and Kayis (2014), Nascimento et al. (2019), Wang and Sun (2005), Meneses et al (2017), Matthews (2004), Yu et al. (2016), Akcil, Agcasulu, and Swain (2019), Saqib et al. (2019), Shen et al. (2019), Kalela (2002)

Environmental perspective

Due to the increasing abnormal behaviour of the environment-like excessive global warming, huge air pollution, abrupt change of climate, the deterioration of quality of environment has now become an urgent concern. Exploration of environmental sustainability has revealed a new dimension in the field of supply chain management. A lot of papers have been published in this regard, but there remain scopes yet to be explored. At present, industries are facing a great challenge to balance the three basic things- to stop the environmental deterioration, to keep-up the social responsibility and to run the economy.

Ciccullo et al. (2018) tried to reconcile the paradigms of sustainable supply chain management and business strategy. Kara, Ibbotson, and Kayis (2014) put emphasis on environmental awareness of both customers as well as manufacturers to mitigate carbon footprint. Meneses, Stratton, and Flores (2017) stressed the reuse of reconditioned water generated by the different food processing sectors to restore the sustainability of water. Wang et al. (2017) defined reverse logistics in two senses – local and global – and compared it with forward and green logistics.

Proper management of EOL system plays a vital role to reduce environmental problems and is also able to mitigate the demand for rare earth materials (solar photovoltaic and battery; Salim et al. 2019). Several authors (Swain and Mishra 2019; Akcil, Agcasulu, and Swain 2019; Shen et al. 2019; Ferron and Henry 2015; Olivetti et al. 2017 etc.) have reinforced the collection of rare earth elements and their proper utilisation along with the barriers. Generally, rare earth elements, namely indium, tungsten, lithium and nickel, are reused or recycled in different sectors. Extraction of these elements from their ores is very difficult but these metals are abundant in some secondary items. For example, Indium is easily available in LCD panels of electronic devices. Indium is a very useful metal to run various instruments. Again, lithium is also widely used in manufacturing batteries in the transportation sector. The metal palladium is used to mitigate the harmful exhaust of the car. Thus, if these rare earth elements are properly reused or recycled, society will be benefitted from three aspects – (i) the environment will get rid of excessive and unwanted pressure from e-waste, (ii) sustainability will be enhancement and (iii) production cost will be reduced, i.e. people will enjoy economic benefits. Several authors (Swain and Mishra 2019; Akcil, Agcasulu, and Swain 2019; Shen et al. 2019) have reinforced the extraction/collection of such rare earth elements and their proper utilisation along with the barriers in the respective field. Rothenberg and Becker (2003) studied the environmental concern of the pictorial offset corporation. The corporation adopted the certificate ISO 9002 and 14,001 simultaneously to take the right action and assessed themselves voluntarily towards the environmental effect and achieved very good results.

Economic perspective

The closed loop helps to increase economic sustainability in the business scenarios. It is sometimes observed that re-manufacturing is beneficial and attractive than the new production of items. Reuse and re-manufacturing of EOL product may lower the production cost resulting the lower selling price of a commodity. Consequently, demand of that product increases and hence the company gets economic benefits and customers are benefitted. Many researchers have highlighted on the concept of third-party logistics for collection of EOL product from the end users and emphasised on the scrutiny for recovery of the remaining value-added components. Creation of value of scrap materials helps to achieve economic benefit and to increase sustainability.

Mitigation of cost is one of the important factors in circular economy. Several researchers (Akcil, Agcasulu, and Swain 2019; Shen et al. 2019; Dwyer 2005) tried to pay attention towards cost-effectiveness of circular economy along with the environmental enhancement and social welfare. Steeneck and Sarin (2013) revealed an economic implication of remanufactured product. After a detailed observation, they concluded that there is a significant gap in investigating the study of re-manufacturing pricing policy which is very significant. Pensupa et al. (2017) observed that the prospect of clothing industry largely depends on the economic growth of the people in society. Saqib et al. (2019) assessed the cost analysis of hydrothermal carbonisation (HTC) because economy of a firm is also important along with the technical application.

Social perspective

Social sustainability has been treated as the core of all of the sustainable strategies. Firms or enterprises are to be cautious about social sustainability. The reason behind it is the execution of different legislation act along with the consciousness of the people. The wastes generated from the different sectors of enterprises create a huge hazard to society. The leakage of pollutants from the EOL product may endanger human life. Therefore, firms have to seek an effective disposal strategy to keep our surroundings clean and healthy. An overview of different researchers in the light of social sustainability has been discussed below. Rajeev., Pati, and Padhi (2019) discussed the adverse effect of chemical technology in society. The social impact of individual corporations had been studied by Goldstein and Newell (2019). They also mentioned that it depends on geographical location. According to the authors’ success of supply chain activities of individual corporations depends on the assimilation of different branches of industrial ecology. They also explore the relationship between the flow of product and its environmental effect along with the parameters of social welfare and suggest envisaging NGOs in this regard. The social damage due to the wastes has been studied by Malladi and Sowlati (2018).

3.4. Waste management

The generation of wastes emanated from the various sectors creates a huge pressure on the society and environment in our surroundings due to improper disposal strategy. Wastes may be of different kinds. Among them, e-waste and food and vegetable waste are the most abundant. Generally, these wastes are used either to fill the land or to be incinerated. In the case of landfill, finding a new place is a major problem. Moreover, an arbitrary gathering of wastes creates land and water pollution. Again, indiscriminate incineration emits greenhouse gases and causes extensive air pollution.

E-waste generally includes electrical and electronic wastes, computers and mobile phones. Several researchers like (Williams et al. (2008), Quariguasi-Frota-Neto and Bloemhof (2012)-wastes from personal computer), (Wang et al. (2017), Akcil, Agcasulu, and Swain (2019)-electrical and electronic wastes) stated that such kind of waste creates huge environmental and social hazards. They reinforced towards the recycling of the usable parts of this e-waste. E-waste may be beneficial if spare and parts of these waste is properly utilised. Many researchers (Swain and Mishra (2019), Akcil, Agcasulu, and Swain (2019), Shen et al. (2019), Ferron and Henry (2015), Olivetti et al. (2017)) put emphasis on the extraction of rare earth metals like Indium Tungsten, Lithium, etc., from these wastes.

Food wastes create a major problem for society. It is very urgent to manage food waste smoothly. Several researchers like (Lin et al. (2013), Xu et al. (2018), Facchini et al. (2018), Saqib et al. (2019), Truong et al. (2019), Singh et al. (2012)) tried to find the way of proper utilisation in the form of energy generation, thermal conversion, bio-fuel production, redistribution etc of these food and vegetable wastes. Pensupa et al. (2017) have paid attention on the extraction of the valuable parts from fibre wastes and uses of excess water in clothing industry. They would like to highlight how monosaccharides can be obtained from the fibre waste, usage of wood waste has been discussed by Garcia and Hora (2017). Testa et al. (2017) reinforced to enhance the efficacy of waste collection emanated from glass manufacturing in the central and southern part of Italy. Malladi and Sowlati (2018) put emphasis on the collection of waste, proper storage, extraction of usable things and proper way of disposal strategy. Wang et al. (2017) tried to point out that proper management of waste of resource recycling industry may be one of the important research topics in future. The correlation between environmental management and waste management has been studied by Rothenberg and Becker (2003).

Therefore, the main objectives of waste management are

(i) Reduce the e-waste arisen from various sectors of electrical & electronic devices, computers, batteries of vehicles etc.

(ii) Encourage to recover the usable components of these wastes and maximise the reuse of these recovered items.

(iii) Find the proper disposal strategy of residual wastes that are not possible to be reprocessed.

(iv) Prevent the excess production of food waste

(v) Find the way of maximum energy generation and other usable things from food and vegetable wastes.

It has been observed that from the year 2019, utilisation of food and vegetable wastes and extraction of rare earth elements from different kinds of e-waste has been gaining much attention.

3.5. Energy generation

Energy generation is one of the indicators of resources for economic and social development. The issue of energy generation from various wastes (food and vegetables, fibre waste, etc.) is very significant today. But there are several barriers in the process of waste to energy. Among them, the most important is the unawareness of the stakeholders in the supply chain loop. We should pay attention to energy recovery in different ways such as the treatment of biowastes by anaerobic digestion to produce biogas and a fertiliser product. Use of biomass should be encouraged instead of conventional energy resources such as petroleum, etc. Keegan et al. (2013) showed how a limited supply of biomass can be optimised. It should be used in the sector where social demand is high. Intelligent use of biomass can solve this problem. Garcia and Hora (2017) et al. pointed out that wastes generated from the wood are generally burnt directly to get energy but due to the newest renewable energy act in European countries cascade use of wood waste is being encouraged for energy generation.

3.6. End-of-life (EOL) product

The product life cycle plays a major role in successful and profitable product management. With the advancement towards modernity, the volume of e-waste such as personal computers, mobile phones, batteries of vehicles and other electronic devices have been increasing in a huge volume. The demand for these things is also increasing day by day. Improper disposal of these e-wastes may endanger life in our society. So, recovery of these wastes is essential and after the screening reuse of the parts or components of these used items is a great opportunity for the manufacturer. On the one hand, the process of reuse and re-manufacturing helps to reduce environmental deterioration, and on the other hand, it minimises the production cost. Thus, proper management of different kinds of EOL products is extremely important for society especially from the environmental and economic point of view.

Geyer and Jackson (2004) focused on the issue that appropriate measures of EOL should properly be arranged. It has been observed by Sasikumar and Kannan (2008) that due to the short life-span of an item, the supply of EOL products has been increased, so proper and speedy management to recover the EOL product is an urgent need. European Union has looked at the sustainability criteria and introduced incentives to encourage the use of EOL biomass. The utility of biomass has been discussed by Keegan et al. (2013). Arnette, Brewer, and Choal (2014) stressed the reuse, recycling of the EOL product to enhance sustainability. Vieira and Horvath (2008) highlighted two ways for assessment of EOL product in construction sectors and observed that the difference between the two approaches is not a significant one. To mitigate energy consumption and material uses, EOL treatment has been studied by Peng et al. (2018). Quality of end-of-life vehicles (EOLV) by the process of re-manufacturing has been studied by Mohamed, Saman, and Sharif (2017). Tanwer, Prajapati, and Singh (2015) proposed to analyse the life cycle of a product and suggest examining whether it is possible for re-manufacturing.

3.7. Sectors

Several authors have tried to explore different sectors from which we can obtain usable items or usable parts by recycling EOL products. The insight of various authors in pointing out the fields is discussed below. Benefits, opportunities and challenges of recycling and reuse in the area of used personal computers, mobile phones, electrical and electronic items, vehicles are the important and interesting sectors still to be explored (Williams et al. 2008; Quariguasi-Frota-Neto and Bloemhof 2012; Ghosh et al. 2016; Wang et al. 2017); Akcil, Agcasulu, and Swain 2019; Swain and Mishra 2019; 2017). Geyer and Jackson (2004) discussed the impact of two important components, recycling and reusing of reverse logistics in the field of structural steel section within the United Kingdom construction sector. Vieira and Horvath (2008) overviewed their observations on the use of EOL products in the construction sector. Millis, Chan, and Wallace (2019) inquired about the supply of resources of the construction sector in Hong Kong city. It is a rapidly growing place where more than 90% of the buildings are made of concrete. So, it is not easy to supply raw materials for those constructions. The use of citrus peel, waste cooking oil and cashew shell nut liquid in the countries like China, the United Kingdom, Tanzania, Spain, Greece and Morocco has been explored by Lin et al. (2013). Stindt and Sahamie (2014) overviewed CLSC of the process industry. The textile industry needs to extract value from the fibre waste (Pensupa et al. 2017). Golinska and Kawa (2011) have automotive industry to examine the reverse flow of materials in the automotive industry. Yu et al. (2016) explored waste materials of the printed circuit board industry. Salim et al. (2019) chose the field of solar photovoltaic and battery energy storage systems and discussed the challenges, hindrances, facilitators to EOL products in the above sectors. Testa et al. (2017) prepared their analysis in the perspective of the Italian Glass manufacturing industry. Bressi et al. (2019) performed their analysis on the rubber industry. Crumb rubber, a by-product of tyre rubber, is widely used in the construction of road asphalt pavement. Rajeev., Pati, and Padhi (2019) explored the chemical industry to examine sustainability in the field of supply chain management.

3.8. Country

We have studied the papers which have added special emphasis on reuse, recycling and re-manufacturing and sustainability. These papers are designed by the way of survey, data analysis, interview method, case study, etc., based on the activities of firms, enterprises, mid-large size companies of various countries around the world. We discuss the view of the authors in the following way. In Europe, continuous efforts are going on to extract the minerals and nutrients of organic wastes and to use it in the food production and supply chain by the process of recycling. Ghosh et al. (2016) noticed that more than 40% of the world population reside in the five countries namely Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa known as BRICS. So, they have chosen to perform their review on waste in the electrical and electronic industries in the perspective of those countries. Geyer and Jackson (2004) surveyed the activities of the firms in Asia, Europe, and North America. Wang et al. (2017) compared EPR among the four countries Japan, Germany, Switzerland and China. Different countries adopt different strategies to maintain the EPR system. Japan issues a coupon system through which customers have to pay for scrapping products whereas Germany manages funds by national electronic equipment registry and public waste management agencies. Switzerland collects funds from the customers whereas in China the EPR system is controlled by the Government. Garcia and Hora (2017) made their survey within the countries Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy and Finland as these countries are the huge producer of wood waste. Status of food wastes in New Zealand, United Kingdom, and California in the United States has been studied by Saqib et al. (2019), Facchini et al. (2018), Truong et al. (2019) respectively. Mohamed, Saman, and Sharif (2017) made their study in developing countries like China, India, Malaysia, and Brazil to examine the retention of the same quality of remanufactured EOLV components in that country. Millis, Chan, and Wallace (2019) reviewed the resources strategy of raw materials of the construction sector in the well-developed and very populous city of Hong Kong. Table 6 presents list of review papers emphasised Waste Management, Energy Generation, Sector, End-of-life Products, and Countries. Table 7 displays some other emerging issues on sustainability which are depicted during the review process.

Table 6. Reviews highlighted waste management, energy generation, sector, end-of-life products and countries

Types of Reviews	Reviews
Waste Management	Lin et al. (2013),Williams et al. (2008),Xu et al. (2018),Sasikumar and Kannan (2008),Mishra, Kumar, and Chan (2012),Nikolopoulou and Ierapetritou (2012),Silva, de Brito, and Dhir (2017),Bartl (2014),Ciccullo et al. (2018),Kara, Ibbotson, and Kayis (2014),Singh et al. (2012),Nascimento et al. (2019),Pensupa et al. (2017),Ghosh et al. (2016),Wang et al. (2017),Wang and Sun (2005),Matthews (2004),Yu et al. (2016),Garcia and Hora (2017),Saqib et al. (2019),Malladi and Sowlati (2018),Testa et al. (2017),Shen et al. (2019),Facchini et al. (2018),Wang et al. (2019),Truong et al. (2019),Rothenberg and Becker (2003)
Energy Generation	Lin et al. (2013), Keegan et al. (2013), Quariguasi-Frota-Neto and Bloemhof (2012), Lüdeke-Freund, Gold, and Bocken (2019), Arnette, Brewer, and Choal (2014), Kara, Ibbotson, and Kayis (2014), Singh et al. (2012), Peng et al. (2018), Saqib et al. (2019), Salim et al. (2019), Nikmaram and Rosentrater (2019)
Sector	Lin et al. (2013), Tibben-Lembke and Rogers (2002), Olivetti et al. (2017), Williams et al. (2008), Geyer and Jackson (2004), Xu et al. (2018), Kumar et al. (2009),Keegan et al. (2013),Quariguasi-Frota-Neto and Bloemhof (2012) Stindt and Sahamie (2014), Ritchie et al. (2000), Silva, de Brito, and Dhir (2017), Vieira and Horvath (2008), Singh et al. (2012), Nascimento et al. (2019), Pensupa et al. (2017), Ghosh et al. (2016), Swain and Mishra (2019), Wang et al. (2017), Scheuermann and Leukel (2014),Matthews (2004),Meneses, Stratton, and Flores (2017), Golinska and Kawa (2011),Yu et al. (2016),Ferron and Henry (2015), Saqib et al. (2019),Salim et al. (2019), Testa et al. (2017), Tanwer, Prajapati, and Singh (2015), Bressi et al. (2019),Akcil, Agcasulu, and Swain (2019), Shen et al. (2019), Nikmaram and Rosentrater (2019), Truong et al. (2019),Millis, Chan, and Wallace (2019),Giordano (2017),Rothenberg and Becker (2003) Kalela (2002)
End-of-life	Geyer and Jackson (2004), Sasikumar and Kannan (2008), Keegan et al. (2013), Vieira and Horvath (2008), Peng et al. (2018), Swain and Mishra (2019), Salim et al. (2019), Tanwer, Prajapati, and Singh (2015), Akcil, Agcasulu, and Swain (2019), Mohamed, Saman, and Sharif (2017)
Country	Lin et al. (2013), Geyer and Jackson (2004), Ghosh et al. (2016), Wang et al. (2017), Garcia and Hora (2017), Saqib et al. (2019), Testa et al. (2017), Facchini et al. (2018), Truong et al. (2019), Millis, Chan, and Wallace (2019), Mohamed, Saman, and Sharif (2017), Rothenberg and Becker (2003), Kalela (2002)

Table 7. Displays the reviews address some other emerging issues on sustainability

	Reviews
Reviewers/Authors	Broad Category	Specific Topic
Ilgin and Gupta (2010), Tanwer, Prajapati, and Singh (2015) Nikolopoulou and Ierapetritou (2012), Giordano (2017), Peng et al. (2018), Golinska and Kawa (2011)	Environment Conscious manufacturing/ Sustainable manufacturing
Silva, de Brito, and Dhir (2017), Millis, Chan, and Wallace (2019)	Recycle aggregates
Akcil, Agcasulu, and Swain (2019), Ghosh et al. (2016), Nascimento et al. (2019)	e-waste	Electrical and electronic wastes Urban waste (Plastics, Cast iron etc)
Williams et al. (2008), Quariguasi-Frota-Neto and Bloemhof (2012)		Personal computer, mobile phone etc
Mohamed, Saman, and Sharif (2017)		EOL of vehicle
Lin et al. (2013)	Food & Vegetable waste	Energy generation
Truong et al. (2019)		Recent status
Saqib et al. (2019)		Hydrothermal carbonisation
Singh et al. (2012)
Xu et al. (2018)		Anaerobic digestion
Facchini et al. (2018)		Reuse & Valorisation
Nikmaram and Rosentrater (2019)		food processing industry
Pensupa et al. (2017)	Fibre waste	Utilisation and use of excess water in clothing industry
Garcia and Hora (2017)	Wood waste	Energy generation
Testa et al. (2017)	Waste from Glass manufacturing	Cullet recycling
Bressi et al. (2019)	Tire rubber
Shen et al. (2019)	Extraction of rare earth/transition metals from secondary resources	Tungsten extraction
Akcil, Agcasulu, and Swain (2019)		Indium extraction from LCD panel
Olivetti et al. (2017)		Lithium-ion battery
Swain and Mishra (2019)
Ferron and Henry (2015)		Recycling of rare earth
Sasikumar and Kannan (2008), Vieira and Horvath (2008)		EOL product
Akcil, Agcasulu, and Swain (2019), Shen et al. (2019), Dwyer (2005)	Environmental aspects of circular economy

4. Conclusions

In our study, we have made our best effort to review the existing scientific literature on intelligent waste management going through 77 relevant scientific papers. We have classified the review into different parts such as systematic literature review, case study and content analysis. This study revealed following outcomes. Journal of Clean Production is in the first position in terms of publication of review papers but California Management Review has the maximum number of citations. California Management Review consists of three review papers among the 10 most influential papers. After careful study of top 10 influential papers, it can be inferred that researchers are very much attentive on reverse supply chain and its various aspects. The themes environmentally conscious product designing, waste management, reuses of rare earth metals, recycling of electronics products have now become the topic of growing interest. Ilgin and Gupta (2010) have the maximum number of citations (649) and the emerging work of Olivetti et al. (2017) receives 202 citations within a very short span of time. The paper enlightens the barriers of reusing the lithium-ion battery from which it can be assumed that this field has now become a promising research topic. Moreover, after careful study of the total scenarios of published papers, we come into conclusion that the extraction of rare earth or critical metals such as Tungsten, transition metals, etc., and its barriers of collection (Swain and Mishra 2019; Ferron and Henry 2015; Shen et al. 2019, etc.) has currently become an interesting field of research. Year of publication on food wastes reflects that better and advanced level of utilisation of food waste as well as vegetables wastes in different ways namely energy generation, resources of fuels, and chemicals.

All the authors put emphasis on the proper and intelligent management of waste which is the urgent need at the present hour. Reverse logistics is very crucial in supply chain management. The output from different industries is reused as a raw material. The success of handling reverse logistics largely depends on the proper integration of the reverse supply chain with the forward supply chain. We have also noticed that special attention has been paid to food wastes and e-wastes because food wastes can effectively be utilised, but e-wastes are very hazardous to the environment. Several authors have suggested that different processes like anaerobic digestion, HTC, etc., should be encouraged to generate energy from food waste in the form of biofuel, biogas, fertiliser etc. Since the generation of energy plays a vital role to maintain the present form of civilisation, importance is given to the energy generation from the different types of wastes. At the same time, wastes emanating from different sectors should be handled optimally both in energy generation and proper utilisation. Some authors have drawn our attention to the fact, that sometimes e-wastes contain some valuable and rare metals which are present in very little quantities and are becoming insufficient in the earth. So, recovering and reusing them may save primary resources and increase sustainability in the long run. Sustainability has three different facets: environmental, economic and social. Achieving sustainability for enhancing the quality of the environment, cost-effective economic concern and benefit of society is the priority in most of the articles.

After careful study of the publications and their acceptance (citations), we recommend the following research fields that may be promising in future: (i) Way of utilisation of food and vegetable waste (ii) way of collection of rare earth metals from secondary sources (iii) integration of reverse and forward supply chain (iv) Sustainable smart and flexible production system (v) Sustainable health care system. It is recommended to extend the concept of TRSC in emerging areas like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Big data (BD), Artificial intelligence (AI), Digitisation, Smart factory, Industry 4.0 technology, Real-time data processing, Cyber-physical systems (CPS), Block chain technology (BCT), Total Quality Management (TQM). In the present pandemic situation, COVID-19 becomes a very challenging issue to industry and supply chain. TRSC has the big opportunity and responsibility to contribute and manage this tough situation, specially, to manage the huge wastes generated from covid-19 management.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sudipta Sinha

Dr. Sudipta Sinha received his Ph.D. degree in Mathematics from the University of Kalyani, Kalyani, West Bengal, India. His research interest covers the areas of inventory management and supply chain management. He is a lifetime member of the Operational Research Society of India (ORSI). He is working as an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics, Burdwan Raj College, University of Burdwan, West Bengal, India.

Nikunja Mohan Modak

Dr. Nikunja Mohan Modak received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Kalyani, Kalyani, West Bengal, India. His research interest covers the areas in inventory management, game theory, supply chain management, and bibliometric study. He has published more than 50 articles in international journals such as JORS, IJPE, EJOR, JCLP, IJPR, CAIE, Annals of OR, IJPR, CACE, AMC, IJAMT, IJLRA, MPE, CCE, Transportation Research: Part A, Safety Science, Group Decision and Negotiation, CIRP Journal of Manufacturing Science and Technology and others.

Appendix

Table a: Classification of review papers

Table

Sl no	Authors	Year	Type of Review`			CLSC/RL				Waste Management	EOL product	Sustainability Impact			Sector	Country	Review Topic
			Case Study/survey	Literature Review	Systematic analysis	Reuse /Recovery	Recycle	Re-manufacturing	Energy Generation			Environmental	Social	Economic
1	Ilgin and Gupta	2010		√				√				√					Environmentally conscious manufacturing and product recovery (ECMPRO): A review of the state of the art
2	Lin et al.	2013	√			√	√		√	√		√			Fuels and Chemicals	China, UK, Tanzania, Spain, Greece & Morocco.	Food waste as a valuable resource for the production of chemicals, materials and fuels. Current situation and global perspective
3	Blackburn et al.	2004			√	√								√			Reverse supply chains for commercial returns
4	Tibben-Lembke and Rogers	2002			√		√	√							Firm		Differences between forward and reverse logistics in a retail environment
5	2017	2017			√										Vehicle		Lithium-Ion Battery Supply Chain Considerations: Analysis of Potential Bottlenecks in Critical Metals
6	Williams et al.	2008		√		√	√			√		√	√	√	Computer		Environmental, social, and economic implications of global reuse and recycling of personal computers
7	Krikke, Le Blanc, and Van De Velde	2004			√	√											Product modularity and the design of closed-loop supply chains
8	Geyer and Jackson	2004	√			√	√				√	√		√	Construction	United. Kingdom	Supply loops and their constraints: The Industrial ecology of recycling and reuse
9	Dowlatshahi	2005	√				√	√									A strategic framework for the design and implementation of re-manufacturing operations in reverse logistics
10	Akçcal E., Çetinkaya S.	2011		√				√									Quantitative models for inventory and production planning in closed-loop supply chains
11	Xu et al.	2018		√						√		√			Food		Anaerobic digestion of food waste – Challenges and opportunities
12	Beamon	2005		√								√					Environmental and sustainability ethics in supply chain management
13	Sasikumar and Kannan	2008		√		√	√	√		√	√	√					Issues in reverse supply chains, part I: End-of-life product recovery and inventory management – an overview
14	Kumar et al.	2009		√				√							Food Industry		Overview of RFID technology and its applications in the food industry
15	Keegan et al.	2013		√					√		√	√		√	Energy		Cascading use: A systematic approach to biomass beyond the energy sector
16	Stindt and Sahamie	2014		√				√							Industry		Review of research on closed loop supply chain management in the process industry
17	Quariguasi-Frota-Neto and Bloemhof	2012		√					√			√	√		Computers & Mobile Phone		An analysis of the eco-efficiency of remanufactured personal computers and mobile phones
18	Mishra, Kumar, and Chan	2012			√		√	√		√		√					A multi-agent architecture for reverse logistics in a green supply chain
19	Nikolopoulou and Ierapetritou	2012		√						√		√	√	√			Optimal design of sustainable chemical processes and supply chains: A review
20	Lüdeke-Freund, Gold, and Bocken	2019		√			√	√	√								A Review and Typology of Circular Economy Business Model Patterns
21	Ritchie et al.	2000	√			√	√			√					Health Service (MRI)		The benefits of reverse logistics: The case of the Manchester Royal Infirmary Pharmacy
22	Silva, de Brito, and Dhir	2017		√			√	√		√		√		√	Construction		Availability and processing of recycled aggregates within the construction and demolition supply chain: A review
23	Arnette, Brewer, and Choal	2014		√			√	√	√		√	√	√	√			Design for sustainability (DFS): The intersection of supply chain and environment
24	Vieira and Horvath	2008		√				√			√				Building		Assessing the end-of-life impacts of buildings
25	Bartl	2014		√		√	√			√		√					Moving from recycling to waste prevention: A review of barriers and enables
26	Ciccullo et al.	2018		√						√		√	√				Integrating the environmental and social sustainability pillars into the lean and agile supply chain management paradigms: A literature review and future research directions
27	Kara, Ibbotson, and Kayis	2014	√			√	√		√	√		√	√	√			Sustainable product development in practice: An international survey
28	Singh et al.	2012		√			√	√	√	√		√			Vegetables wastes		Utilisation of Vegetable Wastes for Bioenergy Generation
29	Nascimento et al.	2019		√		√	√			√		√	√	√	e-waste/ Plastics		Exploring Industry 4.0 technologies to enable circular economy practices in a manufacturing context: A business model proposal
30	Steeneck and Sarin	2013		√				√						√			Pricing and production planning for reverse supply chain: A review
31	2017	2017		√			√			√		√		√	Textile & Clothing		Recent Trends in Sustainable Textile Waste Recycling Methods: Current Situation and Future Prospects
32	Peng et al.	2018			√		√		√		√	√					Sustainability of additive manufacturing: An overview on its energy demand and environmental impact
33	Ghosh et al.	2016		√			√			√					Electrical and electronic equipment	BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa)	Waste electrical and electronic equipment management and Basel Convention compliance in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) nations
34	Swain and Mishra	2019		√		√	√			√	√				Metals		A review on the recovery and separation of rare earths and transition metals from secondary resources
35	Wang et al.	2017			√					√		√			Electrical and electronics equipments	Japan, Germany, Switzerland & China	Operating models and development trends in the extended producer responsibility system for waste electrical and electronic equipment
36	Scheuermann and Leukel	2014		√		√									Ontology		Supply chain management ontology from an ontology engineering perspective
37	Wang and Sun	2005	√	√		√	√	√		√		√		√			A review of reverse logistics
38	Matthews	2004			√	√				√		√		√	Quantum hard-disk		Thinking outside ‘the box’: Designing a packaging take-back system
39	Meneses, Stratton, and Flores	2017		√		√						√		√	Food processing		Water reconditioning and reuse in the food processing industry: Current situation and challenges
40	Golinska and Kawa	2011	√	√				√							Automotive industry		Re-manufacturing in automotive industry: Challenges and limitation
41	Yu et al.	2016			√		√			√		√		√	Printed circuit board industry		Examining regeneration technologies for etching solutions: A critical analysis of the characteristics and potentials
42	Ferron and Henry	2015	√				√								Rare earth metals		A review of the recycling of rare earth metals
43	Steinhäuser et al.	2004			√	√	√					√					Principles and perspectives
44	Garcia and Hora	2017			√		√	√	√	√						Germany, UK, Italy and Finland	State-of-the-art of waste wood supply chain in Germany and selected European countries
45	Jena and Sarmah	2016		√		√	√										Future aspect of acquisition management in closed-loop supply chain
46	Saqib et al.	2019		√					√	√				√	Food waste	New Zealand	Valorisation of food waste via hydrothermal carbonisation and techno-economic feasibility assessment
47	Salim et al.	2019		√			√		√		√	√			Solar Panels& Battery		Drivers, barriers and enablers to end-of-life management of solar photovoltaic and battery energy storage systems: A systematic literature review
48	Malladi and Sowlati	2018		√						√		√	√				Sustainability aspects in Inventory Routing Problem: A review of new trends in the literature
49	Yao and Askin	2019		√			√										Review of supply chain configuration and design decision-making for new product
50	Testa et al.	2017			√		√			√					Glass Manufa cturing	Italy	Long-term sustainability from the perspective of cullet recycling in the container glass industry: Evidence from Italy
51	Tanwer, Prajapati, and Singh	2015		√				√			√	√			Manufacturing Industry		Effect of various factors for achieving environmental performance in manufacturing industry: A review
52	Bressi et al.	2019			√	√	√								Construction of Road		Crumb rubber modifier in road asphalt pavements: State of the art and statistics
53	Akcil, Agcasulu, and Swain	2019		√			√			√	√	√		√	e-waste (computer & television)		Valorisation of waste LCD and recovery of critical raw material for circular economy: A review
54	Rajeev., Pati, and Padhi	2019		√								√	√		Chemical Industry		Sustainable supply chain management in the chemical industry: Evolution, opportunities, and challenges
55	Kaur and Awasthi	2018		√			√					√	√	√			A systematic literature review on barriers in green supply chain management
56	Goldstein and Newell	2019		√			√					√	√				Why academics should study the supply chains of individual corporations
57	Shen et al.	2019		√			√			√				√	Tungsten metallurgy		Tungsten extractive metallurgy: A review of processes and their challenges for sustainability
58	Facchini et al.	2018			√	√				√					Food waste	United Kingdom	Food flows in the United Kingdom: The potential of surplus food redistribution to reduce waste
59	Nikmaram and Rosentrater	2019		√		√			√			√			Food Processing Industry		Overview of some recent advances in improving water and energy efficiencies in food processing factories
60	Wang et al.	2019		√			√			√		√					A scientometric review of resource recycling industry
61	Truong et al.	2019		√			√			√					Poultry Industry (Broiler)	USA (California)	Food waste in animal feed with a focus on use for broilers
62	Millis, Chan, and Wallace.	2019		√			√								Construction	Hong kong	Aggregate supply in Hong Kong: Past, present and looking to the future
63	Mohamed, Saman, and Sharif	2017		√				√			√				Vehicle	China, India, Malaysia & Brazil	Quality assurance of remanufactured components of end-of-life vehicle: A literature review
64	Giordano	2017		√			√					√			Plastics		Consumer demands drive packaging advances
65	Dwyer.	2005					√						√	√			Occupational risks; Goods recycling; Product based manufacturing; Occupational therapy
66	Rothenberg and Becker.	2003			√					√		√			Lithographic printer	United States	Pictorial offset corporation: Simultaneous ISO 9002 and 14,001 registration
67	Kalela.	2002		√			√							√	Paper Industry	Europe	The forest industry cluster concept in an European context