Tarig Khidir Eltayeb
School of Management, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia
Suhaiza Zailani
School of Management, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia
Recently, the environment has emerged as a hot issue for governments, societies, as well as business organizations. This importance emanates from increasing environmental problems such as global warming, ozone depletion, solid wastes, and air pollution. Business organizations are considered to be the source of most of the environmental problems. This paper is an attempt to clarify the path towards that end and highlight steps to be taken by business organizations through green supply chain to make sustainable development a reality. Specifically the paper is interested to investigate the adoption of green supply chain initiatives e.g. green purchasing, eco-design, and reverse logistics. The survey data was obtained from ISO 14001 certified manufacturing firms in Malaysia. The results showed that eco-design is the most adopted green supply chain initiative followed by green purchasing, while reverse logistics showed the lowest level of adoption. The result of the t-test revealed that there are no significant differences in green supply chain initiatives between firm ages and type of product. The result of the t-test disclosed also that firms that participate in green-interested associations have significantly higher level of adoptions of green supply chain initiatives than firms that do not participate. Green supply chain initiatives can play significant role in achieving the “triple bottom line” of social, environmental, and economic benefits and, therefore, contributing to sustainable development of the society.
This paper has been downloaded 10373 times since published. The persistent DOI of this paper is DOI:10.31387/oscm040019.