Reverse logistics

Reverse logistics is the flow of goods backward through the chain, from the consumer or point of use toward recovery, covering returns, repairs, refurbishment, recycling, and disposal. It handles e-commerce returns, warranty replacements, recalled products, reusable packaging, and end-of-life equipment, and demands processes the forward chain lacks: inspection, grading, restocking, and disposition decisions. Done well it recovers value through resale or remanufacture and meets extended-producer-responsibility rules; done poorly it ties up working capital in unsorted returns. In container shipping, empty-container repositioning is a parallel reverse flow of the equipment itself.