A Life-Cycle Approach to Characterizing Environmental Impact of Logistics Equipment in Container Ports: An Example of Yard Trucks

Abstract

The incitation for this paper is the necessity to research the trends in sustainability regarding the mitigation of environmental impacts of logistics equipment in container ports. This paper discusses environmental impacts of the most common type of cargo handling equipment used at container terminals which are yard trucks, by using the methodology of life cycle assessment. The conventional yard trucks are compared with zero or near zero emissions counterparts in order to reveal the most environmentally efficient ones. The comparative life cycle assessment, which forms the major part of this paper, illustrates how this methodology could be applied as comparison and decision making tool in order to identify the entanglements that might arise from unaware application of technologies advertised as ‘green’ or eco-friendly.