Sustainability: an assessment from the economic, environmental and social perspectives

Abstract

Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) has gained much interest in the academic and corporate field. Companies have been adopting green practices in the supply chain while achieving sustainability in the business process, by fulfilling its economic, environmental and social objectives. This report aims to study whether GSCM allows company to achieve positive financial performance through environmental implementations. Various trade-offs and benefits will be identified in the study of the company on its green implementations through analysing the environmental investment costs and repayments from its green efforts. Empirical information in the improvement of the environmental and financial performance would be reviewed to analyse the rationale that caused revenue enhancement and cost reduction to the company through green practices. Furthermore, companies are facing drivers and barriers in the employment of GSCM. Hence, various drivers and barriers were identified through an intensive research from various scholar papers, which was then supported by a survey done by a shipping company. The project has shown that companies will face high trade-offs during the initial period of its green efforts. However, positive financial performance could be achieved in the average of three to five years after the adoption of GSCM in its business process.