Wal-Mart Green Supply Chain Management - Green Purchasing, Green Manuf Case Study

Essays on Wal-Mart Green Supply Chain Management - Green Purchasing, Green Manufacturing, Green Distribution Marketing, and Reverse Logistics Case Study The paper â€Å"Wal-Mart Green Supply Chain Management - Green Purchasing, Green Manufacturing, Green Distribution Marketing, and Reverse Logistics† is a   brilliant variant of case study on management. Today, the globe is being confronted with environmental changes that are affecting the world population. There have been increased debates on climatic change which have created cross-nation movements to identify the causes of climate change and develop solutions to it before it is too late. In an effort to address the issue of global warming, many nations with main focus on the organization are passing rules and regulations which are largely aimed at reducing the world's carbon emission (Bowen, Cousins, Lamming and Faruk, 2001). Similarly, businesses, consumers and various stakeholders are becoming environmentally conscious. Recently, customer loyalty is shifting into more environmentally friendly products whereas companies are adopting the green supply chains by introducing more sustainable strategies in their organization. It is clear that the focus on the different sustainable strategies continues to result in a growing need for effectively integrating strong environmentally sound choices into organization supply chain management practices (Bowen, Cousins, Lamming and Faruk, 2001). This paper aims at discussing how Wal-Mart is adopting the principles of environmental and social sustainability both in its logistic and supply chain management operations.Figure 1: Timeline of Wal-mart sustainable activities2.0 Green supply chain overviewAccording to Corbett and Klassen (2006), the green supply chain is defined as the process of incorporating environmental friendly inputs as well as transforming these inputs into outputs that can be re-used and reclaimed at the end of their defined lifecycle thus the creation of a more sustainable supply chain.Figure 2: Environmental impact at each stage of the supply chainCorbett and Klassen (2006) assert that, in order to address the issue of global warming and climatic change, it is important to integrate environmental factors with supply chain principles so as to understand how the process of a given organization supplies chain impact on the environment. Therefore, a more sustainable supply chain is not only optimal to a particular organization but rather it is optimal relative to its limited impact. Corbett and Klassen (2006) assert that, greening supply chain can be defined as the process of implementing a sustainable development plan which is aimed at achieving improved safety, environmental and health performance. This ensures efficient use of energy and other natural resources while at the same time reducing both societal and environmental impacts of business operations.One of the main aspects of the green supply chain is that they work towards improving both a company's economic as well as environmental performance through establishing a stronger supplier and buyers relationship (Lenox an d King, 2004). Companies such as Wal-Mart have developed different initiatives for ensuring that green supply chain management which includes screening its suppliers for environmental performance. Also, the company provides training to build on its company supplier’s environmental management especially in enhancing the reverse logistical system. According to Lenox and King (2004), green supply chain management has various environmentally preferably production of products as well as services that conserves the water and energy while at the same time minimizing the generation of waste and greenhouse gasses.Green supply chain management= Green purchasing + green manufacturing/ material management + green distribution/ marketing + Reverse logistics.