The three pillars of Sustainable Development can be applied to green logistics (see Figure 1).
As mentioned in the definitions of green logistics before, in the past, companies coordinated their logistics activities comprising freight transport, warehousing, packaging, materials handling and data collection and management to meet customer requirements at minimum cost which just refers to the monetary terms (Nowakowska-Grunt, 2008). Now, the environment has become a concern. It is treated as a factor of the cost. Some companies have already taken external costs of logistics associated especially with the environmental issues such as climate change, pollution and noise into account. Green logistics is therefore defined as efforts to examine ways of reducing these externalities and achieving a more sustainable balance between environmental, economic and social objectives, (see Figure 1). All efforts in the “green” logistics area are therefore focused on contributing towards, and ensuring, sustainability (Hans, 2011).