Green supply chain management

Green supply chain management is the consideration of environmental issues within supply chain management.

Definitions and scope

GSCM has been defined as the following:

"GSCM encompasses a set of environmental practices that encourage improvements to the environmental practices of two or more organizations within the same supply chain"
"GSCM is the process of incorporating environmental concerns into supply chain management including product design, material sourcing and selection, manufacturing, delivery of final products, and the management of product's end-of-life"
"GSCM can be achieved by considering environmental issues at the purchasing, product design and development, production, transportation, packaging, storage, disposal, and end of product life cycle management stages."
"GSCM is the integration of environmental concerns in the inter-organizational practices of supply chain management"

Srivastava defines the scope of GSCM as ranging "from reactive monitoring of general environmental management programs to more proactive practices implemented through various Rs ". He includes "green design" within GSCM, which involves a conscious review of the materials and processes adopted by a business as well as management of the suppliers from whom materials and services are obtained. From an entrepreneurial perspective, entrepreneurial GSCM is a new approach to environmental management executed by green entrepreneurs across whole supply chains instead of thinking in terms of individual non-environmental firms. This new holistic view can integrate individuals, companies, and supply-chains of different entrepreneurs from various countries together in an environmental friendly way.

GSCM criteria

A nonexhaustive list of GSCM criteria from D. Kannan et al. is given below.
; GSCM Criteria 1 : "Commitment of senior management to GSCM"
; GSCM Criteria 2 : "Inter-functional cooperation for environmental improvement"
; GSCM Criteria 3 : "Compliance with legal environmental requirements and auditing programs"
; GSCM Criteria 4 : "ISO 14001 Certification"
; GSCM Criteria 5 : "Selection of suppliers includes environmental criteria"
; GSCM Criteria 6 : "Work with suppliers to meet environmental goals"
; GSCM Criteria 7 : "Evaluations of the internal environmental management of suppliers"
; GSCM Criteria 8 : "Evaluation of the environmental management of 2nd-tier suppliers"
; GSCM Criteria 9 : "Work with clients for eco-design"
; GSCM Criteria 10 : "Work with clients to make production cleaner"
; GSCM Criteria 11 : "Work with clients to use environmentally friendly packaging"
; GSCM Criteria 12 : "Acquisition of the cleanest technologies by the company"
; GSCM Criteria 13 : "Product designs that reduce, reuse, recycle, or reclaim materials, components, or energy"
; GSCM Criteria 14 : "Product designs that avoid or reduce toxic or hazardous material use"
; GSCM Criteria 15 : "Sale of excess stock or materials"
; GSCM Criteria 16 : "Sale of scrap and used materials"
; GSCM Criteria 17 : '''"Sale of used equipment "'''

Relative importance of criteria

Instead of concentrating equally on every criterion, more attention should be given to the most important criteria. D. Kannan et al. calculated the importance of criteria by taking the preferences of 3 decision-makers:

Criteria	Decision Maker 1	Decision Maker 2	Decision Maker 3
1	Very High	Very High	Very High
2	High	High	Very High
3	High	Very High	Very High
4	Very High	High	Medium
5	High	Very High	High
6	High	High	Very High
7	High	High	Medium
8	High	Medium	Medium
9	Very High	High	High
10	High	Medium	Medium
11	High	High	High
12	High	High	Very High
13	Very High	Very High	Very High
14	Very High	High	Very High
15	High	Medium	Medium
16	High	Medium	Low
17	High	Medium	Very Low

In this table, the preferences of criteria are given in terms of linguistic variables. From these linguistic variables, calculations were done to find out the ranking of the importance of criteria.
Form the above graph; it is clear that the top 4 most important GSCM criteria are

GSCM Criteria 1 : "Commitment of senior management to GSCM"
GSCM Criteria 13 : "Product designs that reduce, reuse, recycle, or reclaim materials, components, or energy"
GSCM Criteria 3 : "Compliance with legal environmental requirements and auditing programs"
GSCM Criteria 14 : "Product designs that avoid or reduce toxic or hazardous material use"

This result was obtained when the authors considered the GSCM criteria for choosing a supplier for an electronics company in Brazil. Depending on the situation, it is possible that other GSCM criteria are deemed to be more important by the decision-makers..

Barriers

Tumpa et al., 2019 conducted a study to find the hurdles faced while implementing GSCM practices. The study was conducted in the textile industry of Bangladesh. Some of the most important hurdles were found out to be

low demand from customers due to lack of awareness
financial constraint
lack of government regulations

Other hurdles may be more important in different situations
Another considerable hurdle for firms trying to implement GSCM practices is the fact that many suppliers along the complete supply chain reside outside of any direct organizational control from the firm. Supply chains are often built upon a network of individual suppliers and a firm's ability to meet their Corporate Sustainability Standards can be hindered by suppliers with which they do not directly interact.

Relevance

; Increase in publications
; '''Both developed and developing countries are doing research on GSCM.'''