Abstract
One approach to incorporate sustainability in organisations is the implementation of life cycle management (LCM). LCM involves sharing responsibility for addressing environmental impacts across the entire supply chain of products and services, extending from raw material extraction to end-of-life of the product. The New Zealand primary sector relies heavily on natural resources and provides about 70% of the country’s export revenue. Most companies in primary industry sectors in New Zealand are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Successful sector-wide uptake of LCM can potentially facilitate effective measurement and management of environmental impacts caused by this sector. The aim of this research was to identify the barriers and enablers to successful LCM uptake by New Zealand primary sector SMEs within a sector-based context. An extensive review of the literature was undertaken in the areas of change management for SMEs and supply chain management. The main factors influencing successful LCM uptake include owner/manager influence, environmental culture, resource availability, future orientation, knowledge of environmental issues, market requirements, geographical separation of production and consumption, awareness of own environmental issues and communication/information sharing. This paper forms the basis for future research and development of tools for the effective implementation of sector based approaches to LCM in the primary industry. The results of this research include a capability maturity model and the development of a cloud based platform for collaboration and communication around LCM.
Highlights
There is a rising awareness of environmental problems and wider sustainability issues amongst governments, industries and consumers both in New Zealand and elsewhere [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
From an life cycle management (LCM) perspective, the environmental responsibilities of companies include their own production sites, and up- and downstream entities in the supply chain throughout the entire life cycle from raw material extraction to end-of-life of a product [42]. This concept was summarised in the definition provided by the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) Working Group, which stated that the goal of LCM is to address environmental, economic, technological and social aspects of products and organisations to achieve continuous environmental improvement from a life cycle perspective [43]
Three main guides have been produced on LCM uptake to date: the first one was produced in 2003 [56] and was followed by another guide published by the UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative in 2007 [57]
Summary
There is a rising awareness of environmental problems and wider sustainability issues amongst governments, industries and consumers both in New Zealand and elsewhere [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Only a small number of New Zealand companies have integrated a life cycle approach into their environmental sustainability initiatives [40,41] This raises the question of why so many NZ SMEs have not engaged with LCM, and what is required to change this situation. The second part of the paper (Section 5) integrates the findings from the literature-based research to provide a compiled overview of enablers and barriers to LCM implementation on a sector-wide level, and discusses the idea of the sector-based approach as a means of supporting sectors with large numbers of SMEs. The paper concludes with a summary of how these results can be used in future empirical research on LCM uptake in the New Zealand primary sectors (Section 6)
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