Prioritising green logistics practices for the freight logistics industry in Malaysia

Greening the logistics industry in Malaysia is on the national agenda as the industry is the second largest source of carbon emissions. The market pressure for the industry to improve its environmental practices is increasing, while the solutions to decarbonise are considered either too costly or unfeasible to scale. This study identifies the key green logistics practices (GL) in freight logistics, and explores the prioritisation and hierarchical structure of the influential practices. The Analytic Hierarchy Process method is used to rank six key- and sub-criteria of GL, identified from the literature and validated by experts through a questionnaire survey. The relative prioritisation of the GL criteria is found to be highest for green packaging and green procurement. The relative importance of green practices is attributed to the use of technology in transportation, energy optimisation in packaging, green supplier sourcing, eco-friendly purchase and 4R1D packaging. The relatively low prioritisation of many of the other green practices suggests that sustainability is going to be a long-term goal for the freight logistics industry.