Coincident with the rapid growth of omni-channel retailing, growing urbanization, changing consumer behavior, and increasing focus on sustainability, academic interest in the area of last mile logistics has significantly increased. The growth in academic publications has been tremendous, with three out of four articles appearing within the past five years. The influx of research spans multiple disciplines and various methodologies, underlining the complexity and fragmentation of last mile logistics research, which leads to a lack of unity in the understanding of the concept. We provide a systematic review and classification of the literature to provide a more coherent view of last mile logistics research. The review covers 155 peer-reviewed journal publications focusing on last mile logistics. Findings demonstrate that the literature embraces a diversity of aspects and facets that are classified into five themes: emerging trends and technologies, operational optimization, supply chain structures, performance measurement, and policy. Further, we propose a framework of last mile logistics literature that comprises five components and their interrelationships, namely, last mile logistics, last mile distribution, last mile fulfillment, last mile transport, and last mile delivery. The results provide a foundation for further development of this research area by proposing avenues for future research.

Packaging affects the logistical and environmental efficiency of supply chains. The purpose is to increase knowledge of the current state, trade-offs and improvement potential of packaging logistics in supply chain practice. The research is based on 22 cases, each of which consists of supply chain mapping and structured interviews with three supply chain actors (manufacturer, distributor and retailer). The paper identifies and explains improvement areas, trade-offs and gaps in packaging systems from a supply chain perspective for the whole packaging system, each packaging level and each actor. The results highlight a supply chain potential of better incorporating the packaging system requirements from actors not responsible for developing or selecting packaging. The paper discusses models for cost and benefit sharing and for identification and decision-making about trade-offs in packaging systems. Companies should collaborate, apply an integrated approach and find new approaches to integrate customers and suppliers into the packaging development process.

The use of disposable and reusable packaging is a hot topic in policy and practice, but different studies have come to different conclusions on when each packaging type is the more sustainable alternative. The purpose of this paper is to map and review scientific literature that compares disposable and reusable packaging for food, beverages and e‐commerce from a sustainability perspective. The methodology is a systematic literature review, which identifies 91 scientific papers. The paper describes and analyses the origin, characteristics and state of current knowledge and then proposes future research directions within five areas. It identifies and presents what is known in literature to achieve environmental and social sustainability, as well as circularity for disposable compared to reusable packaging. The review shows that the literature is to great extent qualitative, often studying individual products in a specific context. European studies dominate the current literature, and many of them revolve around a few types of products and packaging. Slightly under half of the studies use the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The review of these studies provides some indicative suggestions for when disposable and reusable packaging is environmentally preferable, but the number of LCA studies is too limited, and their content too fragmented to draw general conclusions about this. Overall, the review of 91 articles shows a great need for continued research that compares the environmental efficiency of disposable and reusable packaging. It also highlights the necessity for more knowledge to be able to clearly state under what conditions and in what contexts disposable and reusable packaging are the most sustainable options.