How to Achieve a More Sustainable and Environment Friendly Supply Chain!

Environment friendly Supply Chain

A sustainable and environment friendly supply chain is a key component for any successful business. It helps companies to manage their resources more efficiently, reduce costs, improve quality and increase productivity.

In this article, we will show you how you can make your supply chain more sustainable and eco-friendly.

Green Suppliers

Searching for a green supplier online is one of the most effective ways to find one. You can look at their website and see if they mention any environmental involvement or sustainability initiatives. You can also contact them directly and ask if they have any certifications or eco-friendly practices they are committed to.

If you don’t want to go through all that trouble, you can always ask other companies in your industry if they know any green suppliers. That way, you get an outsider’s perspective on which companies are worth working with and which ones aren’t.

Recycle

Recycling is one of the most important things you can do to have a sustainable supply chain. It involves taking items that are no longer useful to you and turning them into something new that is useful, so it’s basically making money from the trash.

Recycling is good for the planet because it keeps all those materials out of landfills, which means less waste and fewer emissions from rotting garbage (which is bad for air quality). Recycling also reduces energy consumption because glass and aluminum bottles can be melted down instead of being made from scratch using raw materials. 

When you throw something away as trash, it doesn’t just disappear—it gets picked up by someone else’s truck, which takes it away so they can throw your stuff away too. That would be fine if there weren’t so many people doing this at once. If everyone in the world were using their own personal truck every day to take their recycling back home with them, there’d be millions upon millions more trucks on our roads than needed. 

With recycling initiatives in place around most developed countries now, though, there will soon be far fewer trucks clogging up our streets than ever before.

Eco-Friendly Packaging

Companies can start by using recycled materials in their packagings, such as paperboard and plastic bottles. This reduces the need for virgin raw materials and helps cut down on waste going to landfills.

Eco-friendly packaging is a crucial link in developing a more sustainable and environmentally friendly supply chain. Sustainable eco-friendly custom shipper packaging options can help reduce environmental impact and meet the demands of consumers for responsible eco-friendly practices.

Looking beyond standard cardboard boxes, investing in specialised eco-friendly shipping materials such as 100% recycled paper and plastic wrap are viable, cost-effective options. Additionally, using eco-responsible adhesives such as water or plant-based solvents instead of synthetic ones will further minimize environmental harm.

A smart selection evaluating eco-friendly shipper packaging that maximises savings without sacrificing quality can help create an eco-conscious and sustainable supply chain.

If you must use plastic, look for eco-friendly options that will decompose quickly after disposal (such as cornstarch-based plastics). Your goal should be to reduce landfill trash as much as possible while still keeping your product safe during shipping and handling.

Use renewable packaging material instead of nonrenewable ones like glass or metal containers if possible. These might include paperboard boxes with air cushioning inside them rather than Styrofoam peanuts used around fragile items like electronics being shipped via UPS or FedEx.

Sustainable Hazardous Waste Management 

An important aspect of Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) is to ensure the safe disposal of waste using eco-friendly methods. Green transportation services are sufficient to take the waste to their respective landfills. However, the problem arises with hazardous waste management. 

Dumping toxic waste into water bodies has been a wrong and neglectful way of dealing with such hazardous materials. So, no matter how sustainable the rest of your supply chain is, this one act alone is enough to make all your efforts null and void. Besides, such careless dumping can cause serious health and environmental damages, something that happened in the Camp Lejeune incident.

Analyzing the Camp Lejeune Water Contamination Lawsuit will show you how such careless toxic release into water bodies is dangerous. Apart from environmental damage, the Camp Lejeune incident has also been linked to various types of cancers amongst the incident’s victims. Thus, not only are you failing to make your supply chain entirely sustainable, but you’re also putting the environment and the lives of other people at risk.

So, with GSCM practices in mind, it’s necessary first to isolate these toxic and hazardous materials and then identify safe zones for their disposal. The transportation aspect can be handled using eco-friendly transportation methods, something we’ll discuss in the next section.

The rest ultimately comes down to detoxifying the materials or making them less hazardous for environmental release. After that, these waste products can be released into their respective disposal sites.

The process of making these hazardous materials less dangerous for the environment depends on the materials themselves since not all toxic waste can be treated using a common method. You have to keep EPA guidelines in mind while you do this.

Efficient Transport

Start by replacing your current fleet of trucks with more efficient models. If you use rail transport, consider using electric or hydrogen-powered trains. If you have a large number of goods that need to be transported between ports, consider using sea vessels instead of trucks or trains. They’re much more fuel efficient and promote sustainable delivery.

Transporting goods via air has become increasingly popular in recent years as it saves time on land and frees up valuable road space for other users such as commuters and emergency vehicles.

However, while air freight may be faster than road transportation, it is not as environmentally friendly because it requires much more fuel than other modes of transport (and often uses carbon-based fuels). So, if possible, try to reduce the amount of air freight being used in your supply chain.

Conclusion

A sustainable and environment friendly supply chain can benefit both your company and the environment and climate change. By making eco-friendly business decisions, you can reduce your carbon footprint and save money in the long run.

Environment friendly Supply Chain article and permission to publish here provided by Stephen Evans. Originally written for Supply Chain Game Changer and published on August 8, 2022.

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