Closed-Loop Ecological Research on Green Supply Chain from the

Perspective of Circular Economy:

Take the Courier Industry as an Example

Mohan Chang

Faculty of Business, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau 999078, China

Keywords: Circular Economy, Green Supply Chain, Closed-Loop Ecology, Express Delivery Industry.

Abstract: The rapid growth of the express industry in recent years has brought significant environmental challenges,

including excessive packaging waste and rising carbon emissions from transportation. Meanwhile, global

attention to climate change and sustainable development has intensified, pushing industries to adopt circular

economy principles and green supply chain practices as urgent priorities.Under the framework of circular

economy, the closed-loop ecosystem of the green supply chain has become a key model to promote the

sustainable development of the industry. Taking the express industry as an example, this paper explores how

to optimize resource utilization and reduce carbon emissions through green supply chain management to

achieve a win-win situation for both the economy and the environment. The research covers green packaging,

low-carbon transportation, intelligent recycling system and supply chain synergy to build an efficient closed-

loop ecosystem. In addition, this paper analyzes the challenges faced during the implementation of green

supply chain, such as insufficient awareness of enterprises, cost pressure, imperfect policies and regulations,

difficulties in supply chain synergy and technical bottlenecks, and proposes feasible solutions.

1 INTRODUCTION

Under the background of the deep reconstruction of

the global economic pattern, the continuous

intensification of climate change and the increasingly

prominent resource and environmental constraints,

countries and enterprises pay more attention to the

construction of green supply chains. Jd.com, Taobao,

pinduoduo and other online shopping platforms are

popular with consumers, and there is a large demand

for supply chain transportation every quarter.

According to CCTV news, in 2024, China's express

delivery business exceeded 170 billion pieces, with a

year-on-year increase of 21%, ranking first in the

world for 11 consecutive years (Li,2025). The rapid

development of the supply chain has brought huge

economic growth, but also exacerbated the problem

of environmental pollution. Excessive resource

consumption and increased waste discharge are

posing a threat to the ecological environment.

Therefore, as a sustainable development solution,

society has widely concerned green supply chain.

However, in practice, the construction of green

supply chain also faces many challenges, such as cost

pressure, technical bottlenecks and imperfect

recovery system. In this regard, this paper will take

the express industry as the research object, analyze

the problems existing in the implementation of green

supply chain, and explore relevant solutions.

2 PROBLEM ANALYSIS

The construction process of green supply chain is not

achieved overnight. It faces enormous challenges in

all aspects. Take the catering industry as an example:

from the release of the national standard "green

hotels" (gb/t21084-2007) in 2007 to 2013, more than

700 green catering enterprises in China have been

evaluated, and the number of catering enterprises in

China has reached more than 4million, indicating that

the proportion of enterprises participating in

environmental protection practice is very low.

Because environmental protection practice will

increase the cost of enterprises, especially the short-

term cost, and the long-term performance may take

longer to show. This objective fact is one of the

reasons why many enterprises have not formulated

Chang, M.

Closed-Loop Ecological Research on Green Supply Chain from the Perspective of Circular Economy: Take the Courier Industry as an Example.

DOI: 10.5220/0014351700004718

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Engineering Management, Information Technology and Intelligence (EMITI 2025), pages 295-299

ISBN: 978-989-758-792-4

295

environmental practice plans (Li and Zhu,2013). In

addition, the establishment of green supply chain also

faces many challenges, including insufficient

awareness of enterprises, cost pressure, imperfect

policies and regulations, difficulty in supply chain

coordination and technical bottlenecks. These factors

hinder the standardization and sustainable

development of the industry to a certain extent, and

affect the green transformation process of enterprises.

2.1 Insufficient Enterprise Cognition

Because of the lack of interests and markets involved,

many enterprises still lack a deep understanding of

green supply chain management, resulting in green

development not being included in long-term

strategic planning. In essence, the perception of

enterprises is very much influenced by the perception

of consumers, as there is an exchange of benefits

between the two. The importance consumers attach to

the hostel supply chain determines to a certain extent

the importance enterprises attach to it. Some

enterprises only regard green supply chain as a short-

term environmental protection initiative, without

recognizing the economic benefits and market

competitiveness it brings. The lack of environmental

protection awareness of enterprise leadership and

employees makes the promotion of green supply

chain lack of endogenous motivation, and it is

difficult to form an industry consensus.

2.2 Cost Pressure

Nowadays, some consumers are in pursuit of instant

gratification, they both require low price of goods,

and demanding delivery time, this double pressure

forces express delivery enterprises to sacrifice

environmental benefits in exchange for market

competitiveness. At the same time, the construction

of green supply chain also needs higher cost

investment, green supply chain involves

environmental protection technology, green

procurement and other links, the initial investment

cost is higher. For example, the introduction of low-

carbon production processes, upgrading energy-

saving equipment, and adopting renewable packaging

materials all require large capital investment. As a

result, it is difficult to show the benefits in the short

term, and some enterprises have a wait-and-see

attitude towards green transformation. In addition,

compared with traditional products, the production of

green products in addition to the need to invest in

green production costs, but also need to invest in

environmental responsibility costs, that is, the green

manufacturer in the production of building camp

activities in order to assume social responsibility as

the premise of solving a consumption of natural and

ecological resources brought about by the

environmental problems of the cost of responsibility,

and the green consumers are willing to pay a higher

price for the green products (Meng and Liang ,2023).

In addition, small enterprises in the supply chain often

face more severe financial pressures and are difficult

to bear additional environmental expenditures, thus

affecting the greening process of the entire supply

chain.

2.3 Incomplete Policies and

Regulations

On May 1, 2018, the Provisional Regulations on

Express Delivery came into force, which made clear

provisions on matters such as express delivery

development protection, express delivery service

standardization, and express delivery safety, and

effectively filled the legislative gap in the postal field

at the level of administrative regulations. This move

effectively protects the high-quality development of

the express delivery industry. But also inevitably

bring pollution to the environment.

According to estimates, in 2022, the express

delivery industry produces nearly 20 million tons of

packaging waste. Among them, the reuse of plastic

courier packaging waste is very difficult, especially

in the central and western and rural areas lack of

garbage collection system, bringing a higher risk of

environmental pollution (Wang ,2025).

From the policy point of view, the current

regulations for express packaging only some of the

provisions in principle, the lack of specific

management measures, for the express delivery

industry, the lack of uniform standards and regulatory

mechanisms.

2.4 Difficulty of Supply Chain

Collaboration

The implementation of green supply chain not only

relies on individual enterprises, but also requires the

collaboration of upstream and downstream of the

supply chain. The business activities of enterprises

are accomplished through the articulation of the

supply chain, and the interruption and transfer of key

nodes in the supply chain will bring great losses to

enterprises (Dhaliwal, Judd, and Sierfling et al,2016).

Core enterprises and suppliers as a community of

interest, neither party can be alone in the face of

difficulties. However, because Chinese enterprises

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have long faced shortcomings such as insufficient

core technology innovation capability and constraints

in manufacturing key components, it makes them

more vulnerable to supply chain blockage or chain

breakage under multiple risks such as global trade

policy turbulence, extreme weather events, and

geopolitical conflicts (Ye,Liu and Wu,2016).

Differences in environmental standards, technology

levels and management capabilities of different

enterprises make it difficult to establish a unified

green supply chain system. In addition, insufficient

data sharing and information transparency make it

difficult to realize efficient synergy among supply

chain segments, which affects the implementation of

green goals.

2.5 Technical Bottlenecks

Despite the continuous development of green

technologies, there are still many challenges in their

practical application. Take industrial motors as an

example, the total installed capacity of industrial

motors in China is huge, and power consumption

accounts for about 60% of the country's total power

consumption, however, a large number of stock motor

equipment with low energy efficiency. According to

the survey and analysis, a fine chemical park in eight

categories of 5,000 units of stock motor equipment,

with a total capacity of 100MW, the average capacity

of a single piece of equipment is about 10kW, of

which the number of motor equipment with a single

capacity of more than 15kW only accounted for 35%

of the total number of equipment, the capacity

accounts for 81% of the energy-efficiency

improvement of small-scale motors face a greater

challenge, and urgently need to upgrade the motor

technology as a whole. If the energy efficiency of

these motors can be effectively improved, it will give

a great impetus to the national energy conservation

and emission reduction work.

In materials science, there is a gap between the

performance of some environmentally friendly

materials and the requirements of sustainable

development. For example, degradable plastics,

although it solves the pollution problem of traditional

plastics to a certain extent, it is still difficult to match

traditional plastics in terms of strength, heat

resistance and processing performance, limiting its

wide application in some fields with high

requirements on material performance. Traditional

plastics still dominate the market by virtue of their

good toughness and cost advantages, and the market

share of degradable plastics is relatively low.

In addition, the high R&D cost of green

technology is also a key factor hindering its

development. According to the China Patent Survey

Report 2024 issued by the State Intellectual Property

Office, the R&D cycle of green and low-carbon

invention patents is generally longer, with 61.4% of

enterprises taking more than one year to develop this

category of patents, and 20.7% of enterprises

spending more than 1 million yuan on R&D for each

patent, which are twice as much as those of non-green

and low-carbon invention patents. High R&D costs

have deterred many enterprises, especially SMEs,

from investing in technological innovation. This has

directly led to a relative lack of market supply of

green products and solutions, and a slow pace of

popularization, which fails to meet society's urgent

demand for green development.

3 SOLUTIONS

3.1 Enhancement of Corporate

Cognition

Taking A-share listed companies from 2012 to 2020

as the research sample, we explore the influence and

difference of executive green cognition on corporate

green behavior under CSI and Bloomberg ESG

ratings. Green cognition of executive team can

significantly promote corporate green behavior

(Zou,Cao and Fu et al ,2025). Senior executives in

enterprises should be the first to improve their own

cognition of green development, and at the same time

respond to national policies. Research shows that

political affiliation plays a positive moderating role

between the green cognition of the executive team

and the green behavior of enterprises.

The government can promote enterprises to

establish green development awareness, set up green

development goals, and incorporate sustainable

development into the company's strategic planning.

Enterprises themselves should establish a green

supply chain training system to raise the

environmental awareness of management and

employees.

Enterprises' perceptions are very much influenced

by consumers' perceptions, as there is an exchange of

interests between the two. However, enterprises are

not absolutely passive; they can also raise consumers'

awareness of green supply chains through marketing

campaigns and enhance demand-driven, thus forming

a closed loop of the benefit chain.

Closed-Loop Ecological Research on Green Supply Chain from the Perspective of Circular Economy: Take the Courier Industry as an

Example

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3.2 Optimizing Cost Management

In terms of cost, as we all know, the cost of green

materials is usually several times that of ordinary

materials. For small and medium-sized enterprises,

promoting the development of green supply chain

may increase the economic burden of the enterprises

themselves. However, because of the government's

emphasis on green supply chain, enterprises can

apply for government green subsidies and strive for

environmental tax concessions. In terms of non-

materials, enterprises can adopt energy-saving

equipment and optimize transportation scheduling to

improve logistics efficiency and reduce energy

consumption. Co-invest in green technologies with

upstream and downstream enterprises in the supply

chain to reduce the financial pressure on a single

enterprise. At the same time, enterprises can optimize

supply chain management. Green supply chain

management can effectively improve the utilization

efficiency of resources by optimizing the allocation

of resources, and reduce the operating costs of

enterprises to a certain extent. In addition, although

recycling and disposal of waste need to spend a

certain amount of additional costs, but compared with

the traditional way of disposal, green supply chain

management through recycling and reducing waste

emissions, but can reduce the cost of waste emissions

of enterprises (Lu, 2025).

3.3 Improving Supply Chain

Collaboration

External integration, as a key capability for

enterprises to sustainably gain competitive

advantages, emphasizes that core enterprises and their

trading partners reach a strategic cooperative

relationship, which can help enterprises resist

potential external risks with a low-cost and high-

efficiency collaborative model, thus bringing value to

enterprises. In the era of digital economy, enterprises

can use some means of digital traceability, digital

traceability is a kind of digital information technology

through the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence,

blockchain, cloud computing and other digital

information technology, the physical attributes of the

whole process of the supply chain products and

location information for the collection, analysis and

visualization of the control of the systematic

management mode (Zhou,Chen and Xu, 2024), so

that the supply chain data sharing transparency,

enhance upstream and downstream synergy. This not

only improves the efficiency of the supply chain, but

also promotes the development of related information

technology fields, so that it can be put into production

faster and accelerate the transformation of science

and technology. In the cooperation with the upstream

and downstream supply chain, enterprises can

establish green procurement standards to promote

suppliers to use environmentally friendly materials

and sustainable production processes. At the same

time, they can set up supply chain green performance

appraisal systems to incentivize partners to optimize

environmental protection measures.

3.4 Breaking Through Technological

Bottlenecks

With the development of AI technology, companies

can optimize operation management through AI

technology. In the Supply Chain Technology Forecast

2025 report produced by Gartner, it is pointed out that

supply chain technology is undergoing rapid change,

and 82% of the respondents indicated that they are

increasing their investment in technology, with

robotics, AI, and application modernization being the

key areas of investment in the next few years (Liu,

2024).

It is a cycle of “advocacy - utilization - market -

breakthrough”. Through the government or large

enterprises to promote the development of green

supply chain, to open the macro-control, such as

technical barriers to trade (TBT), the importer in the

health, safety, environmental protection and other

aspects of the higher technical requirements set in the

form of specific regulations, procedures, standards

and other hard technical indicators (Wang and Ma,

2025). This has led to more and more companies

joining the green development camp, thus bringing a

market for the green development field (e.g., green

material research and development, reduction of

green material costs, development of IT technology,

etc.) Some entrepreneurs see the market and

spontaneously increase their investment in research

and development, and collaborate with universities

and research institutes to develop green logistics

technology. Promote renewable energy, such as new

energy vehicles, solar energy storage, etc., to reduce

carbon emissions. Improve environmentally friendly

packaging materials and increase the application rate

of degradable and recyclable technologies. Finally,

realize the breakthrough of green development

technology and the completion of green supply chain.

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4 CONCLUSION

Although there is still a long way to go before a green

supply chain can be built, because of the turbulence

of the world economic situation and the cognitive

limitations of consumers and enterprises, the building

of a green supply chain still faces many challenges.

However, from the perspective of circular

economy and summarizing the suggestions above, the

green supply chain can be gradually promoted in

phases for the express delivery industry.

In the short term, enterprises should respond to the

national policy, quickly start the green supply chain

pilot project, optimize the transportation mode to

reduce carbon emissions. Such as the use of new

energy transportation vehicles, according to statistics,

new energy trucks compared to traditional fuel trucks,

per kilometer can reduce carbon dioxide emissions of

about 0.2 kg. In terms of transport route planning, the

use of intelligent algorithms to optimize routes can

reduce transport mileage by about 10-15%, thus

reducing carbon emissions.

In the medium-term stage, enterprises should

vigorously promote data transparency and strengthen

supply chain collaboration. Through the

establishment of a unified data platform, real-time

sharing of production, inventory, logistics and other

information can increase the response speed of each

link in the supply chain by more than 30%.

Strengthening collaboration with suppliers and

partners can increase resource utilization by 20-30%,

for example, through joint procurement of raw

materials to achieve centralized deployment and

efficient use of resources.

The long-term goal is to continue to invest in

technology upgrades and R&D, and to promote green

supply chain standardization across the industry.

Enterprises should increase their investment in green

technology R&D, accounting for 5%-10% of annual

profits, and actively research and develop new

environmentally friendly materials and energy-saving

production technologies. Leading or participating in

the industry's green supply chain standardization, to

promote the development of the whole industry in the

direction of green and sustainable.

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