The relationship between advanced technology and Green supply chain - Research Paper Example

Source: LMI, 2005 In short, it integrates supply chain management with environmental management to achieve positive, sustainable results. This rooted to the acknowledgment on the role of manufacturing and other business processes on their disproportionate environmental impact with the understanding that operations are improved and savings are accrued in the process. Savings may not always mean cut in direct operational costs but environmental in nature through less reliance on raw or new materials that directly impacts on the environment.

Objectives and Research Questions In the adoption of green supply chain techniques, many corporations or business entities have resorted to either age-old environmental practices or emerging technologies that facilitate green practices. It is therefore the aim of this paper to Provide the history and background in the development of green supply change Explain the significance of greening the supply chain Point our issues relating to the flow of products and services within the green supply chain context Explain how green supply chain management as a practice has been changed over time.

These will be achieved by answering the research questions: 1. What is the importance of the history of green supply chain? 2. How green supply chain management as a practice has changed over time? 3. What is significance of greening the supply chain? 4. What are the issues relating to the flow of products and services within a Green Supply Chain context? Relevance of the Study The continuing depletion of natural resources, growing population, consumption, and lifestyle demands, negative changes in the environment and many other major problems have alarmed policy-makers, businesses, and even individuals in the last several decades.

Current conditions of many of the world’s population and projections of the future are seen as very bleak so that it has become imperative to adopt short and long-term measures to address these issues. Thus, the birth of eco-related movements such as the green supply chain in the business process. The importance of exploring background and history of the green supply chain lies on the possibilities of fast-tracking ways to improve production and design of consumption products. This study hopes to contribute in that segment.

Background Extensive efforts are forwarded by nations and international organizations not only to their governments but also to the business and private sector to step up and address environmental problems. Climate change global warming, environmental degradation, and insurmountable economic and social problems directly linked with the abuse and neglect of the environment have been hounding humanity for several decades now so that the need to integrate acceptable business practices were proposed in order to reduce or decrease negative impacts.

These are strengthened by governmental regulatory mandates as well as organisational requirements for acceptable continuance of business operations in a given community or industry. It has been found that day-to-day practices from population growth to consumption are all connected to the continuing environmental changes which resulted to depletion of natural resources that may soon unable to support the population, increased carbon dioxide releases by each individual that leads to trapping of heat, increased temperatures elsewhere, water shortages, among others as reported by World Bank.

Specifically, there are more than 2 billion people without access to clean water and sanitation, or roughly 40%