SUSTAINABILITY MODEL FRAMEWORK FOR ESTONIA THROUGH INTEGRATION OF REVERSE LOGISTICS: LITERATURE REVIEW

During the last decades, the environmental trend was steadily moving towards sustainability through control of gas emissions, switch to electrical vehicles, recycling in every industry and every European state. Being ranked 10th globally according to the Sustainable Development Report, Estonia has ambitious plans for its sustainability development for the upcoming 20 years. Implementing alternative supply chain models is vital to cover all routes to achieve a sustainable yet effective supply chain strategy. Reverse logistics can offer a solution to optimize the supply chain through recycling used goods on the one hand and rerouting defective products to prevent spoilage on the other hand. Creating a model based on reverse logistics will provide an opportunity to use the full capacity of existing supply chains by simply reversing product flow backward. This paper seeks to analyze existing research and synthesize the current state of reverse logistics models against the background of the methodological approach, which will form an initial framework for further research in this direction. By conducting a deep theoretical overview and summarizing previous experience author seeks to create a strong theoretical basis and a corresponding starting point for the development of a successful sustainable reverse logistics model for Estonia, which has a lack of studies in this field both practical and theoretical, hence requires a strong framework for the future sustainability model based on reverse logistics practices that can have not only theoretical, but also practical implementation.