Constructing sustainable supply chain under double environmental medium regulations

Abstract

With increasing pollution of ecological environment and global warming, more and more countries and governments have enacted double environmental medium (DEM) regulations (i.e., regulations focused on greenhouse gas emission and regulations focused on waste disposal) to curb environmental impact. Based on the triple bottom line principles and DEM regulations, this paper clarifies environmental bottom line into ecological impact and carbon emission bottom lines, the former one of which is contingent on ecological footprint, while the latter one depends on carbon footprint. According to supply chain structure and product life cycle, we analyze environmental impact (i.e., ecological and carbon impact) reduction strategies simultaneously in production, distribution, use and disposal phases as well. Our conclusions show that for production phase, ecological footprint reduction need to remove toxic substances, and carbon footprint could be reduced by improving demand forecast accuracy and investment in carbon reduction technology; For distribution phase, carbon footprint could be mitigated by using smaller packaging and joint distribution, allying with third party logistics providers and adopting cross-docking network; For use phase, carbon footprint could be abated by improving energy efficiency and shortening using time, in some cases, however, shortening using time can increase ecological footprint. For disposal phase, combination of between design for ecology and comprehensive take-back (return) networks could decrease ecological impacts efficiently.