‘Going green’ is set to be the new buzzword in the supply chain industry

RELATED ARTICLES Labour, green issues block India-EU FTA

as companies will be forced to adopt the green way of doing business on the back of climate change action plans and customer demands, according to logistics experts.

“The supply chain industry has started thinking of the impact of carbon emissions. Climate change and how this influences the way supply chain is evolving. Green and low carbon supply chain is going to be the future way of doing logistics business and this will pick up momentum in the near future,” Prof S C Lenny Koh, director - logistics and supply chain management research group, University of Sheffield, UK pointed out at the CII Logistics Summit 2009.

“There will be strong regulations for export and import sector as increasingly customers are demanding suppliers to be green and compliance to specific green legislation, eg, particularly those that are exporting to the European Union market. The entire supply chain, which starts from sourcing of materials, resources used, energy options, design, production, distribution and logistics (transport), should adopt green ways,” she said.

“We need to look at the entire life cycle from sourcing of materials and resou­rces used, right through to prod­uction, amo­unt of energy used, transportation and logistics. Hub and spoke system may no longer be appropriate. Our supply chains have to be made more adaptive and resilient to climate change,” Koh said.

She also pointed out that the issues should not be looked at isolation. We cannot blame the emerging economy of CO2 emission in pursuit of meeting the demand from the developed economies. We cannot simply export our CO2 and exploit the natural and depleting resources there. Both developing and developed nations should work and co-operate to tackle these challenges, as supply chain is an international link.

B Sridhar, chairman, CII Logistics Summit 2009 and director, Bengal Tiger Lines pointed out that in the next few years all export goods will need a green tag. “CII and University of Sheffield will ink a collaboration agreement to work towards green supply chain industry as also to engage and integrate the emerging and developed parts of supply chain sectors,” he added.