The turn of the 20th and 21st centuries is a period of extremely intense changes in various areas of life. Among these changes, alongside political and social ones, changes in economic life occupy a prominent place. In this field, an intense exponential growth is observed almost everywhere.
The number of people in the world is growing exponentially – it has tripled in half a century (!) – and this is accompanied by an exponential increase in production, trade, and consumption, as well as numerous related economic phenomena. This can be – and undoubtedly is for many – primarily a reason for satisfaction and pride, but it also forces us to look at the other side of the coin. In this matter, the concerned voices of ecologists are being heard more and more firmly. Rapidly increasing production, trade, and consumption already at the input stage cause great concern over the excessive depletion of hitherto identified raw material resources, especially non-renewable raw materials and energy carriers, and at the output stage, a very rapid increase in various types of waste, creating increasingly difficult problems to solve. The generation and accumulation of waste are accompanied by the contamination of water, the atmosphere, and the soil. All this increasingly threatens the existence of humans and not only humans on our planet. Entire ecosystems are at risk. The need for environmental protection was perhaps noticed too late, but perhaps that is precisely why preventive actions show such great dynamics and are being taken at various levels of decision-making and management. A particularly high intensity of actions taken has been observed since the second half of the penultimate decade of the last century. To some extent, a turning point in approaching these issues was the great international conference in Rio de Janeiro, called the “Earth Summit”. During its duration, attention was drawn, among other things, to the necessity of adhering to the principles of “sustainable development” (Sustainable development) and paths for the implementation of these principles were charted.
Ways of rationalizing conduct in the field presented above should take into account both the postulates of ecology and the principles of logistics in planning, organizing, and implementing necessary actions. There is, therefore, a need to mutually link ecology and logistics in the work of protecting the human natural environment. And so, eco-logistics emerged as a sub-discipline in relation to both ecology and logistics, a scientific sub-discipline, as well as a field of practical activity, focused primarily on the rational management of waste. The term “eco-logistics”, which has been adopted in Poland for several years, is referred to in English as “Eco-logistics” and in German as “Entsorgungslogistik“. These are not identical, but closely related concepts. In German, it primarily concerns waste disposal logistics, while the term “eco-logistics” adopted in Poland also includes recycling, incineration, composting, landfilling, and compliance with the applicable legal regulations related to this problem. The goal of eco-logistics is to search for and implement optimal technical, economic, and organizational solutions for waste removal and utilization, using modern methods of managing them as secondary raw materials, energy sources, or in another form.
Z. Korzeń defines eco-logistics as an integrated system that: is based on the concept of managing recirculating flows of waste material streams in the economy and the flows of information coupled with them, ensures the readiness and ability for effective collection, segregation, processing, and reuse of waste according to accepted technical and process principles that meet the standards and legal requirements of environmental protection, and enables technical and organizational decisions to be made in the direction of reducing those negative environmental impacts that accompany the implementation of supply, processing, production, distribution, and service processes in logistics supply chains. Holistic and systemic thinking in eco-logistics terms, alongside technical-process and organizational-informational elements, must also take into account economic aspects. Among the huge amount of various types of waste, the subject of particular interest to eco-logistics is primarily municipal waste, i.e., waste generated in the place of human habitation, that is, in households, public utility facilities, and population service facilities. Municipal waste does not include hazardous waste, which, due to its origin and properties, poses a particular threat to human life or health or to the ecosystem, and therefore special legal regulations apply to it.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 5/2002.