Applying green logistics to supply chains must also consider the network and spatial footprint of freight distribution. The hub structures supporting many logistical systems result in a land take that is exceptional. Airports, seaports and rail terminals are among the largest consumers of land in urban areas. For many airports and seaports the costs of development are so large that they require subsidies from local, regional and national governments. The dredging of channels in ports, the provision of sites, and operating expenses are rarely completely reflected in user costs. In the United States, for example local dredging costs were nominally to come out of a harbor improvement tax but this has been ruled unconstitutional and channel maintenance remains under the authority of the US Corps of Army Engineers. In Europe, national and regional government subsidies are used to assist infrastructure and superstructure provision. The trend in logistics towards hub formation is clearly not green as it incites the convergence of traffic flowsand their externalities within a well defined area. On the positive side, this confers opportunities to mitigate these environmental externalities since they are focused and clearly identifiable.Improvement of logistics flows and performance required the setting of new facilities in suburban areas, a trend that has been labeled as "logistics sprawl". In turn, this process is related to additional land take and a level of disorganization of freight flows within a metropolitan area. The setting of logistics zones is an attempt at providing a more coherent setting for distribution centers, including shared facilities such as parking areas and intermodal terminals. They confer the advantage of being able to more effectively minimize the impacts of freight distribution on surrounding areas such as with direct access ramps to highways (less local intrusion) or the setting of buffers of mitigate noise and emissions. There is an array of rationale and settings for logistics zones and correspondingly environmental mitigation strategies. Still, the environmental impacts of distribution centers remain a daunting issue to mitigate.There is growing evidence that green logistics results in increased supply chain performance, particularly since greenness, particularly because it favors an integrated perspective about supply chains. The actors involved in logistical operations have a strong bias to perceive green logistics as a mean to internalize cost savings, while avoiding the issue of external costs. The top environmental priority is commonly reducing packaging and waste. The rise in energy prices is conferring additional incentives for supply chain managers to improve upon logistics and will correspondingly push energy and emissions at the forefront. These observations support the paradoxical relationship between logistics and the environment that reducing costs does not necessarily reduce environmental impacts. By overlooking significant environmental issues, such as pollution, congestion, resource depletion, means that the logistics industry is still not very green. Green logistics remains an indirect outcome of policies and strategies aimed at improving the cost, efficiency and reliability of supply chains. A key aspect of more environmentally friendly freight distribution systems concerns city logistics where the “last mile” in freight distribution takes place as well as a large share of reverse logistics activities. Still, even in this context the driving force is not directly environmental issues, but factors linked with costs, time, reliability, warehousing and information technologies.