Reverse Logistics and Hazardous Materials, Essay Example

Reverse logistics has been a long trend starting from the early 90’s as companies begin to stray away from the traditional supply chain activities and evolving into other methods of recycling and reusing materials. By definition, “Reverse logistics is the management of all the activities involved in the flow of goods, demand information and money in the opposite direction of the primary logistics flow, a reduction in the generation of waste, and management of the collection, transport, disposal, and recycling of hazardous as well as non-hazardous waste in a way that maximizes the long term profitability of the business.” (Logistics Operational Guide, n.d)

One of the aspects of reverse logistics is package handling, however there in lines the most problems. Reverse logistics handles various materials with most being hazardous such as, computes, batteries, paints, and a lot of other materials usually needing to be disposed of safely. When these products are shipped, they have instructions from the manufacturer to ship as HazMat materials. However, when products get returned for various reasons, often time because of damage, the people or organizations that handle packaging the returns are usually store clerks or employees not properly trained under federal regulations or aware of handling hazardous materials. Other problems of reverse logistics are that hazardous materials are shipped without the original packaging or placed in packaging not suitable for the products. The packages are not properly labeled due to the ignorance of the employees. They are over packed, not properly separated, or have the proper documents to correctly identify what the materials for proper modes of shipment transportation. These problems need to be solved in order to ensure proper laws, regulations, and protocols are followed, In order to safely protect employees and stores handling the material, the drivers, and overall the setting materials are placed.

References

COSTHA – Reverse Logistic Background Statement. (n.d). COSTHA. Retrieved from http://www.costha.com/initiatives/reverse-logistics-initiative/index.cfm

Reverse Logistics. (n.d). Logistics Cluster. Retrieved from http://log.logcluster.org/exit/reverse-logistics/index.html