What is a Green Supply Chain?

tylerg

May 03, 2013

Blog

Are you wondering about greening the supply chain? As time goes on, greening the supply chain becomes a more and more important consideration for ensuring that your brand offers your clients the sense of ecological soundness that will motivate them to expand their business with you. Customers are increasingly influenced by social consciousness when making buying decisions between services that they feel are otherwise similar – a green supply chain can make the difference if you are able to integrate it effectively into your marketing collateral.

How to Evaluate “Greenness Levels” for Companies Within Your Supply Chain

But what is a green supply chain? Green supply chain management focuses on making vendor selections throughout the supply chain that will allow you to minimize the ecological impact of your activities. Obviously, as the scope of your business grows, every aspect of green supply chain management will become more complex. You can initially create a green supply chain by examining each vendor in terms of several criteria related to their environmental policies:

  • What are their processes for eliminating waste products associated with their work?
  • Do they engage in efforts to measure and reduce the carbon impact of their business?
  • Do they make use of the most environmentally-friendly transport methods available?
  • Do they integrate environmental policies into performance expectations for the staff?
  • Do they engage in regular Corporate Social Responsibility monitoring and activities?

Obviously, not all enterprises will be adequately prepared to address your needs when it comes to environmental stewardship. Perhaps not surprisingly, smaller companies are best positioned to drive new initiatives in this area, but are less likely than larger firms to invest the additional time and money required to yield tangible benefits. On the other hand, larger carriers benefit from greater revenue for discretionary investment but may not be able to point to results as of yet.

What Can You Do to Improve Environmental Consciousness at Your Own Firm?

Naturally, efficiency is a huge part of ensuring that you will be able to minimize environmental harm, including carbon usage. One way to empower your business and take control over your ecological profile is to implement customized routing optimization software that will offer you total in-transit visibility for all your logistics activities.

Because such software will allow your shipping managers and others to make the most effective decisions related to each and every shipment, you will quickly find you are able to significantly shorten the path that each shipment will take. Not only will this help you to dramatically improve your ecological outlook, but it will also give you the opportunity to save.

Shortening your supply chain through optimization naturally allows you to recover a significant percentage of the cost of each transaction. The sooner you take steps to realize such savings, the more powerful will be their overall impact in terms of bottom-line effectiveness as your business grows. That being the case, both technological and vendor management steps can be taken to realize your goals, especially with the help of an expert logistics consultancy.

More About Logistics from Source Consulting and Around the Web

Logistics to Outperform Retail for Several Years in United Kingdom

Walmart’s New Solution for Outbound Routing and Load Building

Jamaica Small Businesses to Benefit from Logistics Hub Endeavors

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