A study on carbon reduction in the vehicle routing problem with simultaneous pickups and deliveries

Reducing greenhouse gases (GHG), especially carbon dioxide, has become a critical environmental issue worldwide and has attracted attentions in all economic sectors and industries. Ranking the second in cargo turnover volume in China, road cargo transportation has become a key carbon reduction field in the country. In this paper, we study the vehicle routing problem with simultaneous pickups and deliveries (VRPSPD), a commonly encountered practice in road cargo transportation, especially associated with reverse logistics. More specifically, we study a green VRPSPD (g-VRPSPD) problem by including fuel consumption and carbon emission costs into the model. Our numerical results show that, comparing with the traditional distance-minimizing model, the proposed g-VRPSPD model can generate more environment-friendly routes without scarifying much on the total travel distance. We also provide guidelines for green vehicle routing strategies.