Green supply chain management and environmental sustainability a comparative study on global and Indian perspective

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1 Green supply chain management and environmental sustainability a comparative study on global and Indian perspective Karthik Kudroli Assistant Professor, Sahyadri College of Engineering and Management Mangalore, Karnataka, India. karthik.mba@sahyadri.edu.in Abstract Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to development of a generic integrate approach for implementing green supply chain practices and generate important insights and findings. This paper synthesizes the past and current research efforts to develop a viable green supply chain strategy and then proposes promising future research themes. Design/Methodology/ Approach - It is an exploratory qualitative study on green supply chain management challenges by examining frameworks on past and current research efforts on environmental dimensions of sustainability of supply chain management. Findings - The study finds an overall increasing interest towards environmental issues. With the review of the existing literature it is evident and has highlighted a need to understand how green supply chain implementation can contribute to improve an emerging economy like India in terms of organizational performance. Research limitations/implications - This research focuses on implementation of green supply chain practices with respect to Indian economy in terms of companies journal of going green. The qualitative findings need not be generalized globally and are applicable to all companies: this is a major research limitation of this study. Originality/value - This research undertakes a qualitative study based on past and present researches based on secondary sources about implementation of environmental friendly green practices in supply chain management. The authors believe that this study belongs to one of the few studies which will explore the implementation processes in green supply chain management. Keywords- India, Green supply chain management, Supply chain management, Sustainability. I. INTRODUCTION The concept of environment quality was almost nonexistent in the business environment until the quality revolution of 1980 s and the supply chain revolution of 1990 s [1]. These revolutions have integrated environmental management and ongoing operations along with best practices in business. The researchers and practitioners of supply chain management and operations have gained a greater interest and attention by the implementation of an innovative idea like green supply chain management [2]. The concept based on prior literatures on GSCM ranges from Reverse logistics, green purchasing and also green supply chains flowing from supplier to manufacturer and then to customers [3]. Reference [1] defines GSCM as integrating environmental thinking into supply-chain management, including product design, material sourcing and selection, manufacturing processes, delivery of the final product to the consumers as well as end of life management of the product after its useful life. The reason for commitment to the greening of SCM was due to the environmental impacts of production [4] [5]. Hence the perspective changed from greening as a burden to greening as a potential source of competitive advantage in business [6]. The stakeholders and other customers cannot differentiate between a company, its trading partners and its suppliersdue to the incresing level of integrity between supply partners in the recent business environment [2]. Environmental concers may also emerge due to their suppliers and in turn trouble the company s environmental performance and thus greening of the supply chain will help companies avoiding and controlling the potential challenge. India has announced the NAPCC- National Action plan on climate change in june 2010 to take an extra mile on the path of green. India has also introduced the association of Kyoto Protocol and consideration of carbon credit system by various industries [7]. Thus companies should begin to assess not only their supply chain impact on their traditional functional bottom line but also on the environmental performance because of which GSCM also falls with the purview of burgeoning literature of ethics and sustainability [7] giving birth to more popular issues like 3BL (Triple Bottom Line) [8] [9] [10], CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) [8] [11] [12]. In this study, we contribute to the literature by providing a concise framework of Green supply chain management implementation to help academicians, researchers and practitioners in understanding integrated GSCM from a holistic perspective through applying Qualitative analysis on the existing literature w.r.t to various countries and link it to the Indian organisations. After a brief description of GSCM, and aware Indian companies for it, we provide an overview of

2 GSCM drivers, GSCM performances and practices related issues. II. GREEN SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT Research on green supply chains have focussed mainly on environmental aspects, the relationship occuring between the principles of supply chain operations and activities undertaken by the managers, suppliers and consumers. There also exists the differences between green supply chains and reverse logistics. Green supply chain are not the typical processes for reverse logistics but relates to activities such as resources of consumption and reducing sources of waste [13]. Gilbert argues that the creation of green supply chain integration is a process in which all the aspects of supply chain activities are taken into account with regard to environmental aspects. Strategy, Logistics and environment are the three main approaches involved in the creation of green supply chain [14]. Green Supply chain management is directly linked to environmental protection along with the strategy, because the planning with regard to environmental protection is considered to be for longer time period. It is linked along with logistics, because the activities relate to the management of raw materials, distribution storage, waste management and recycling. The creation of green supply chain benefits not only the single economy but the whole nation. Green Supply chain management is directly linked to environmental protection along with the strategy, because the planning with regard to environmental protection is considered to be for longer time period. Moreover, at the national level, green supply chains can help to change the market s orientation to become more green, together with the creation of incentives for small and medium-sized enterprises to implement right practices to improve environmental protection [16]. III. TYPICAL SUPPLY CHAIN SCOPES AND RELATIVE ENVIRONMENT IMPACTS As Shown in Figure 2, inorder to eliminate the waste in all forms, energy used and material consumption, manufacturing organisations need to implement Green quality standards like ISO and also ISO [18]. However effective Green supply chain management is implemented more systematically using the strategic framework of GSCM in figure 3. Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) = Green Product Design + Green Material Management + Green Manufacturing Process + Green Distribution and Marketing + Reverse Logistics (RL) [17]. IV. GREEN PRODUCT DESIGN Life cycle Assessment(LCA) and Environmentally conscious design(ecd) is generally concerened with the process for evaluating and assessing the environmental, occupational health and resource consequences of a product through all phases of its life [19]. The scope of LCA and ECD tracks all the materials and energy flows of the product from the retrieval to the disposal of the product in the environment [1]. LCA is used by business to strengthen the product development techniques because the overall environmental impact of the product is minimized [19]. In ECD products are designed with certain environmental considerations and also called as Design for Environment (DFE) [19]. Figure 1: Approaches to Green Supply chain Management [15] V. GREEN MATERIAL MANAGEMENT The best practice to be considered in Green supply chain management is replacing the hazardous material or the process by the one which seems to be less problematic [1]. For green material management, following processes of material selection, separation and material recovery should receive more support [19]: Figure 2: Typical Supply chain Scope and relative Environmental impacts [17]

3 Figure 3: Framework for Green Supply chain process implementation [17]. 1. Different materials used in a product should be easy to separate; 2. While maintaining compatibility with the existing manufacturing infrastructure, fewer numbers of different materials in a single product should be used; 3. More adaptable materials for multiple product applications should be used; Smaller number of secondary operations should be used to reduce the amount of scrap and simplify the recovery processes. VI. GREEN MANUFACTURING PROCESS In order to have a complete concept of green manufacturing, along with the product designs, the issues involving manufacturing should also be addressed [1]. The main objective of green manufacturing is to reduce the use of virgin material as it indirectly reduces the amount of waste at the manufacturing stage. Emission reduction is another significant aspect of green manufacturing. There are two primary emission reduction means which are; (1) control, emissions and effluents are trapped, stored, treated and disposed of using pollution control equipment; or (2) prevention, emissions and effluents are reduced, changed or prevented altogether through better housekeeping, material substitution, recycling or process innovation [20]. VII. GREEN MARKETING AND DISTRIBUTION Green marketing started in the early 1970 s and being discussed academically since early 1990 s [21]. Green marketing is a broader concept involving product modification, changes in packaging, changes in production process and modifying advertising [22]. Green advertising is given primary importance in the green marketing concept. Green advertising is defined as any advertisement that presents a corporate image of environmental responsibility, supports a green lifestyle with or without highlighting a product/service and clearly and understandably addresses the relationship between a product/service and the biophysical environment [23]. Another aspect in Greening of supply chain management is green distribution. Green distribution is relied on green transportation and defined as ''transportation service that has a lesser or reduced negative impact on human health and the natural environment when compared with competing transportation services that serve the same purpose'' [24]. Educating suppliers on the basis of environmental matters and addressing environmental aspects in the written contract are examples when green considerations are taken into account. VIII. REVERSE LOGISTICS Remanufacturing, recycling and reusing are the major functions of reverse logistics that serve green supply chain management. Reuse is using the item more than once. There

4 are two types of reuse. i.e.: Conventional reuse, which includes using the item again for the same purpose and new-life reuse, where the item is used for the different function. Remanufacturing refers to overhauling, refurbishing and repairing of an item to extend the life from the original core unit. IX. GREEN SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT IN INDIA The above literature survey on green supply chain implementation, integration and practices was broadly based on the assumptions globally with regard to an organizations performance. Now let us review with regard to Indian perspective by taking into account of the global scenario. India is a country with fast pace developing economy but in the same way India has many challenges all ready existing in its way such as poverty, Low literacy rate, High Population and growing hunger for technology. In order to overcome these challenges different pressurizing ingredients to follow green are mentioned below [25]: 1. Government regulations like NAPCC-2010 and tax benefits after following green are the drivers that are forcing the organizations to improve their environmental performance. 2. Supreme court of India has urged the organizations to make appropriate changes in the existing lane to make them more environment friendly. 3. Controlling of carbon footprints has emerged as an serious pressure from developed countries to India. 4. Use of alternative resources such as Bio-diesel, CNG and solar energy by the organizations. Thus from the literature it is evident that the pressure to follow up green initiatives is arising internally as well as externally. There are different practices of green supply chain management involved internally as well as externally by the organizations to add into account for the development of the country s economy. The paper focuses on mainly four types of practice: 1. Less power and paper consumption termed as internal environment management practice. 2. Developing suppliers to practice green, green purchasing are termed as external green supply chain management practice. 3. Waste Minimization, Investment-Recovery and environmental requirements after co-operating with the customers. Many of the Indian organizations are going green and doing extraordinary environmental friendly practices. They have been adopted and certified with global environmental system of ISO [25]. Thus the Indian government can contribute to organizational Green supply chain management practices for Indian companies and their product and services. X. CONCLUSION With regard to the rising global awareness of environmental protection, businesses have employed their GSCM to improve their core competitive advantage. GSCM is a progressively widely-diffused practice among companies that are seeking to improve their environmental performance. GSCM practices, which are viewed as cross-organizational and closed loop reduces the ecological impact of industrial activity without sacrificing quality, cost, reliability, performance or energy utilization efficiency. We presented a state-of-the-art and succinct framework of effective GSCM implementation globally which is based on the literature review of GSCM while integrating the whole gamut of activities in the area. We found that the key themes that came out of the GSCM literature over the last twenty years are the concepts of greening the product design, material management, manufacturing process, distribution and marketing, and Reverse Logistics. Through Indian perspective it is evident that Indian organizations are also experiencing pressure by both the international counterparts and Indian regulatory bodies. 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