E-commerce and the environment: a gateway to the renewal of greening supply chains

Abstract

Electronic commerce is expected to influence a wide range of supply chain systems and thus lead to unidentified environmental impacts. Current studies discussing the impacts have the problem common in that they arrive either at conflicting or un-generalisable results. This article addresses the issue of methodology and proposes an assessment model for the resolution of this problem. Some important implications of this novel model for supply chain management are presented. This article shows that the subject of "Greening supply chains" is in need of a new focus and direction in research which involves building a new set of constructs for decision-making. Several benefits of this are addressed. Research in this subject is somewhat stagnating nowadays; it lacks specific research themes that are necessary for the integration of the available knowledge. Our model, proposed in this paper, represents a meeting point of the need of renewal of this subject, and the need to evaluate large-scale issues such as electronic commerce.

Information technology for sustainable supply chain management: a literature survey

“…E-commerce typically enables SCM activities before a physical product is sent along the supply chain (Davies, Mason, and Lalwani 2007). In the B2B context, e-commerce can have three sustainability effects in supply chains (Abukhader and Jönson 2004): it can (1) enable smoother operations, thus reducing, for example, energy and material consumption; (2) increase the use of energy-consuming hardware equipment; and (3) bring about change in consumption behaviour. The total effects are still unclear (Abukhader 2008).…”

“…The total effects are still unclear (Abukhader 2008). Even the sometimes attributed effects of increased efficiency in processes are still under discussion (Abukhader and Jönson 2004;Dotoli et al 2006). Nevertheless, Walker and Brammer (2012) investigate e-procurement as an option to improve sustainability, while Lee (2003) mentions e-manufacturing in connection with the greening of processes.…”

Eco-efficiency in the era of electronic commerce – should ‘Eco-Effectiveness’ approach be adopted?

“…The considerable limitations involved in using life cycle assessment (LCA) for evaluating the environmental implications of E-commerce (impacts categorised earlier in 'a' and 'b') [1,3] are another reason why E-commerce cannot be adequately dealt with from the perspective of eco-efficiency alone. The main problem is that LCA (which accompanies eco-efficiency in the paradigm of industrial ecology) is only able to accommodate one chain of assessment at a time, and thus has limited scope, which means that there is a very high probability of missing the changes that take place in many other interconnected chains and which happen as a result of a change in the assessed chain.…”

“…E-commerce is a very recent field, and is still in the process of development. In fact, no one can say when or how stabilisation will occur, nor can predict with accuracy the number of ramifications that E-commerce may involve, given the wide range of processes and supply chains implicated [1,3]. The potential impact is so great e much greater than it would have been for the paperless office e that it could affect the whole economic system (the sum of all product systems [4]).…”

“…'Eco-effectiveness' is still seen as a metaphor. Secondly, research into environmental assessment runs into many limitations and difficulties in attempting to reach a consensus concerning the environmental outcomes of implementing E-commerce, as well as in specifying the scope and boundaries of assessment [1,3].…”