As part of the supply chain creating products, you'll want customers to see your product as more friendly to air and water quality than those of competitors. Yet firms can also compete more aggressively through the streamlining and cost effectiveness that can come with the sustainable supply chain.

"The idea of a green supply chain isn't exclusively about green issues," Darin Yug, a Diamond Management & Technology Consultants, Inc. partner who leads the firm's Supply Chain practice and co-author of a recent report entitled The Case for a Green Supply Chain: Turning Mandate into Opportunity (free registration required). "It's also about generating efficiencies and cost containment," he said in a statement.

This is not to imply that it is easy.

Questions
Environmental sustainability requires that executives and supply chain managers ask five questions before creating and following a 'green' supply chain improvement plan, according to Diamond Management & Technology Consultants. These questions include:

• Have we aligned our green supply chain goals with business goals?

• Have we evaluated how our supply chain affects the environment and how we could use this to create value?

• Have we determined how collaborating with suppliers and customers could derive shared benefits through a green agenda?

• Have we created a business case to evaluate, justify and prioritize changes that could result from a green supply chain?

• Have we assessed the full range of our adverse environmental impact, and have we chosen the least burdensome alternative?

Actions
After assessing these considerations in depth, consider taking action. A good start would be to identify the easy battles before attacking a complete transformation of your supply chain. Start small and smart.

World Trade Magazine offers these ideas:

1) Companies should measure directly (what happens in your plant) and indirectly (what happens in your suppliers' plants). Avoid risking any misplaced investments by looking at all energy consumption and materials uses in your factory and those of your supply chain partners. As you invest in changes to improve value for your customers, invest in the processes and materials that will give the most greenness per dollar invested first.

2) Start with the transport industry to cut emissions. For shipping product by trucks, install, or ask your shipper to install, energy-efficient tires, and rely on newer trucks with the latest emissions-control technologies, Dennis Damman, director of engineering at Schneider International, explained to the trade publication. Airfoils and side skirts can increase efficiency, too.

3) Better building management also presents a way to become greener. Design or retrofit green technologies into new and old buildings, and favor suppliers who do the same. This will require lowering energy consumption for heating, cooling and lighting. World Trade Magazine also explains that building location matters. Power suppliers who use, solar, wind or hydropower can help your company lower its carbon footprint.

4) Packaging presents yet another chance to excel at greening. Use properly sized and weight-rated cartons and cases. Whenever possible, replace today's common cushioning materials with starch-based loose fill. Soy based inks might help a company get a higher green score than other inks. Similarly, using wax coatings rather than plastic coatings over inks, if needed because of potential condensation, permits easier recycling.

5) Both truck drivers and rail engineers can achieve more miles per gallon contributing to both lower costs and less carbon emissions if they're trained to reduce idle time and keep speeds in the high-efficiency range.

6) Waste should be reduced as much as possible. For wastes that cannot be eliminated, offer a big reward to anyone who can think of a way to use it as a raw material for some other product.

7) Also recycle as much as possible. Electronic products, tires, metals, batteries, oil, cardboard, paper and many other items, when recycled, can help your business improve its green standing.

8) As an alternative to investing time, effort and often funds to achieve the items described above, a firm can buy carbon credits. A carbon exchange group can provide emission reduction incentives for members and some of the dollars used to buy carbon credits offset the cost of developing systems that reduce carbon emissions.

Enablers
Researchers with the Aberdeen Group recently determined four common enablers to building a successful green supply chain. They are as follows:

• Assign executive-level responsibility for green supply chain initiatives;

• Establish clear metrics and track green performance;

• Move more aggressively to embrace technology enablers; and

• Adopt a life-cycle approach.

Clearly, this goes beyond green issues. While greening the supply satisfies consumers' demand for environmental corporate responsibility, manufacturers throughout the supply chain can also take advantage as a means to improve business operations and reduce costs.

Earlier: How Green Now Pleases Hippies and Suits

Resources

Eight Steps to a Greener Supply Chain
by April Terreri
World Trade Magazine, March 31, 2008