Sustainable food cold chain logistics: From microenvironmental monitoring to global impact

Food cold chain logistics (FCCL) is a systematic engineering process involving the use of a low-temperature environment to maintain the quality and safety of perishable food and reduce food loss and waste (FLW). From a mechanism perspective, FCCL must balance resource costs for a required level of food quality and safety with the costs of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In the context of global warming, the sustainability trade-off between FLW and environmental impact has recently become an important topic in research on efficient, green FCCL. This is mainly reflected in technological innovation, management optimization, and policy responses. With a focus on three levels (micro, meso, macro), this review analyzes current research areas and the gaps and challenges of FCCL in microenvironmental monitoring, life cycle assessment (LCA), and global impact. Future trends pertaining to FCCL in technology, management, and industry and sustainable development are also summarized. Future trends involving sustainable FCCL must be intelligent, systematic, and low carbon. Industry empowerment through next-generation information technologies (e.g., IoT, AI, big data, blockchain) will promote the multidimensional perception, real-time information transmission, and sustainable control of microenvironmental monitoring, as well as support LCA management transformation from fragmentation to system integration. From a macro level, due to the serious global loss of perishable food, the FCCL scale demand is growing greatly, causing a huge environmental burden. Global cooperation, low-carbon consensus, and appropriate policies will become the basis for promoting sustainable FCCL development.