Relationships between environmental impacts and added value along the supply chain

Abstract

The ecometric approach developed by Unilever for overall business impact assessment (OBIA) is extended to show how environmental impacts and economic value build up along the supply chain of a product. Aggregated data for industrial sectors and specific data for one type of product - mobile telephones - both show the same conclusion: the primary resource industries give rise to environmental impacts disproportionate to the associated added value. This simple result has important implications for the positioning of companies in the supply chain, for the developing economies, and for the re-use and recycling of manufactured goods.