address issues of sustainability and integration within the overall supply chain(DfT, 2004): The shipment of materials back to disposal sites and treatment centres is a natural extension of reverse logistics, and better integrating waste management processes within the overall reverse process could help reduce the negative transport impacts. Within the retail sector, two main mechanisms of returns management have been identified(Halldorsson and Skjott-Larsen, the centralized reverse supply chain, one organization has responsibility for the collection, inspection, disposition and redistribution of returned items that could be originating from many different retailers. In the decentralized reverse supply chain,multiple organizations could be involved in this process, where individual sales outlets act as their own'gatekeepers checking returned product and deciding which reuse/disposition paths items should take. Where the gatekeeping function is taken on at the individual store level, local skills will be needed in product inspection and testing. This is not a trivial undertaking and is a process that could lead to increased waste generation if not tightly managed and coordinated. Four physical network structures for handling retail returns have been identified(DfT, 2004), as outlined below.