Packaging Scorecard for Closed-loop Logistics Systems: A Sustainable Development Perspective

Packaging is omnipresent in modern production, distribution and consumption systems. It has multiple functions. They refer to the quality of the products it covers, their advertising/promotion via its marketing aspects and to the logistics via handling/storage/transportation activities it enables. Indispensable partner of different supply chain actors (suppliers, manufacturers, logistics service providers, carriers, wholesalers, retailers, consumers), it is at the heart of packaging scorecards developments since the beginning of our millennium. However, facing the paradigm change heralding the dawning transition towards a circular economy, what about the relevance of these packaging scorecards adapted to a linear supply chain conception? Having studied the imminent relationship between packaging, logistics and circular economy, this article questions the relevance of extant main packaging scorecards and lays the foundations of a new packaging scorecard deliberately oriented towards the circular economy principles.