Using a consolidation centre to reduce deliveries and waste collections from an urban UK shopping centre

Today’s shrinking product lifecycles and accelerated product-to-market launches are placing unprecedented
pressures on the retail sector to deal with a surfeit of goods and end-of-life products. In response, the EU has
enacted a considerable body of environmental legislation that place responsibility on retailers, producers and
distributors for the collection, treatment and recovery of end-of-life materials. Due to the complexities of materialspecific
collections, many retailers outsource them to specialised waste contractors resulting in considerable
variation in contractual, business and operational practices and complex waste logistics networks. This paper aims
to identify the potential logistics and environmental impacts that could arise from the use of a traditional urban
consolidation centre in Southampton UK as an inspection, treatment and consolidation platform for mixed,
recycling and hazardous wastes produced by 92 retailers operating within the city’s main urban shopping centre.