Issues in reverse supply chains,part I: end‐of‐life product recovery and inventory management – an overview

Recovery of used products has become a field of rapidly growing importance in reverse supply chain management. Product recovery includes collection, inspection/separation, disassembly, reconditioning/reuse, remanufacturing, and recycling. In real time situations, the collection of end‐of‐life (EoL) products from the customer and their return to the manufacturer is tedious and time consuming. Reduced product life cycles have increased the rate of product returns and disposals. Owing to shortened product economic life cycles, the recovery of value from EoL products is becoming a necessity. Companies have realised the value that they could recover by remanufacturing or recycling EoL products. Researchers have developed various models for product recovery network design, optimal inventory, production planning and control, remanufacturing, recycling, disposal, etc. The main purpose of this paper is to review the literature on EoL product recovery and inventory management issues in reverse supply chains and to outline some future directions for research on these issues.     

Ethanol From Corn: Clean Renewable Fuel for the Future,or Drain on Our Resources and Pockets?

It is shown here that one burns 1 gallon of gasoline equivalent in fossil fuels to produce 1 gallon of gasoline equivalent as ethanol from corn. When this corn ethanol is burned as a gasoline additive or fuel, its use amounts to burning the same amount of fuel twice to drive a car once. Therefore, the fuel efficiency of those cars that burn corn ethanol is halved. The widespread use of corn ethanol will cause manifold damage to air, surface water, soil and aquifers. The overall energy balance of corn conversion to ethanol demonstrates that 65% of the input energy is lost during the conversion. Carbon dioxide sequestration by corn is nullified when corn ethanol is burned, and there will be additional carbon dioxide, nitrous oxides, and sulfur oxide emissions from the fossil fuels used to produce the ethanol. Students in the Spring 2003 CE24 Freshman Seminar offered at U.C. Berkeley by the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.     

Do Conservative Media Provide a Forum for Skeptical Voices? The Link Between Ideology and the Coverage of Climate Change in British,German, and Swiss Newspapers

This study analyzes whether the ideological orientation of a newspaper has an influence on the salience of skeptical arguments (trend, attribution, impact, and response skeptics) in the coverage of climate change in the UK, Germany, and Switzerland, and examines whether certain newspaper titles act as advocates of the skeptical countermovement. A quantitative content analysis of a broad newspaper sample for each country over the course of one year (June 2012–May 2013) was conducted. The results reveal that conservative newspapers do not amplify skeptical voices in general; the difference between conservative and more liberal outlets is only found in the case of impact and response skepticism. Second, in each country, certain conservative newspapers are particularly open to skeptical arguments.