Environmental Sustainability as Food for Thought! Simulation-Based Assessment of Fulfillment Strategies in the E-Grocery Sector

Environmental sustainability is among the key concerns of our time. Especially the traffic and transportation sector entails a high degree of negative consequences on sustainability metrics such as CO
2
emissions, increasing the need for innovative concepts to cope with the requirements of our modern society, while at the same time decreasing environmental pollution. A potential solution in this regard are grocery deliveries (e-grocery), which can achieve economies of scale by bundling orders. Within the last two decades, multiple e-grocery concepts have evolved in operational practice, which we assess by means of a comprehensive simulation study to guide future systematic investigation on (simulation-based) sustainability research. The concrete results of our study indicate that grocery deliveries by courier, express, and parcel organizations can outperform fulfillment strategies based on insourcing by up to 50 % in terms of mileages as well as 39 % and 66 % regarding CO
2
and PM2.5 emissions.