Green Supply Chain Implementation

Abstract

In recent years, climate changes such as global warming have been a topic that has attracted a lot of interest world over. Such changes have necessitated the need to identify the causes and solutions to these climatic changes. In an effort to mitigate these changes, legislat ions and environmental requirements have been put forward by governments and environmental agencies. The demand for environmentally friendly products has increased over the years and so is the shif ting of loyal ty of consumers .Also, the ever increasing costs of energy and inputs has forced business to find new ways to reduce energy use in order to reduce costs. The supply chain has been ident ified to have a signif icant impact on the natural environment As a result, businesses are deeply trying to green their supply chain by introducing green strategies in their organizations and in the supply chain. This has resulted in a growing need for integrating environmentally thinking into supply chain management and processes. It is in light of this realization that this paper tries, through a thorough literature review, to f ind the best practices that can applied in green supply chain strategies. For this reason, four best approaches were identified; Aligning the goals of the green supply chain with the goals of the business, evaluating the supply chain as a single li fe cycle system, innovation using green supply chain analysis, reducing of wastage at each supply chain stage. It was also identified that Lack of appropriate technology in place to support companies and their efforts to go green and the Trade-off between green requirements and lean pract ices among other factors act as challenges to green efforts.