A Systematic Literature Review of Sustainable Packaging in Supply Chain Management

This exploratory study utilises quantitative analysis to deliver a systematic literature review of published journal papers from 1993 to 2020 with the aim to identify research trends and present a comprehensive overview of research focus conducted in the sustainable packaging domain within the scope of supply chain management. This research is conducted with the data mining software, NetMiner 4, utilising the three analytical tools of statistical analysis, keyword network analysis, and topic analysis. The research also utilises the qualitative method of in-depth interviews in order to investigate current trends and perspectives on the future of sustainable packaging and to validate the analysis results. The research findings reveal that research in the field of 'sustainable packaging in supply chain management' field has been extremely limited, and this study acts to address this research gap. The results confirm that the vast majority of research focus has been in the fields of engineering and science. Research on the topic has gained momentum and has significantly increased since 2013 with research trends becoming increasingly diversified and gradually aligned with the concept of circular economy, while the topic of operational management has been highlighted as an area requiring additional attention. The keyword frequency analysis reveals the following highest occurring keywords in TF: life cycle; environmental impact; consumer; transportation; and production. The highest occurring keywords in TF-IDF: production; transportation; consumer; food; and environmental impact. Topic modelling revealed the following six topics: consumer behaviour; environmental pollution; circular economy; waste management; resource conservation; and operational management. This study contributes to understanding past, present, and future research agendas, and can be utilised as foundation for research development, as it provides insight to current research status and trends provided by the keyword network analysis highlighting research focus and trends in 'sustainable packaging in supply chain management'.