Integrating Life Cycle Thinking, Ecolabels and Ecodesign Principles into Supply Chain Management

Abstract

Population growth, increasing global production and consumption all cause increasing material, water, energy and land use and cause harmful impacts for the environment as well as for human health. Due to limited and scarce resources on planet Earth, environmental depletion, harmful emissions and climate changes our society is pushed one hand as well pulled on the other by increasing environmental awareness, available green technologies and developed concepts of environmental protection towards more environmentally sound future, necessary to enable further existence of human rase in its present extent. Environmentally sound economy such as circular economy, ecodesign and sustainable development will become not just a part of comparative advantage in achieving differentiation strategy but also a possible potential answer to forecasted socio-economic challenges in the forthcoming decades. Because companies are more and more connected and related to their supply chain partners, activities related with environmental improvements must also be focused on supply chain perspective and not just on one company representing just a small part of much broader supply chain or supply network. This chapter is therefore related on investigating green supply chain management, integrating life cycle thinking, eco-design principles and environmental labelling into supply chain management.