MOTIVATIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE PACKAGING IN GREEN SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT.

• Author: Ang, David S.

INTRODUCTION

Over the past several decades the specialized field of Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) has developed in response to the increasing emphasis being placed on resource conservation, sustainability, and corporate social responsibility. The green supply chain consists of analyzing every element of material flow in an industry including supplier selection, material specification/composition, transportation and logistics, packaging, and disposal. Each step in the process is studied to identify opportunities for improvements in resource conservation. It may be less fuel used in the transport of products, less non-recyclable material used in manufacturing, reductions in the amount of single-use packaging required in value chain processes, or reductions in the amount of material inputs used in the manufacturing process (Dixon-Hardy & Curran, 2009).

Hence, packaging is described as not simply a carton or a box, but a system that enables safe, cost-effective, and efficient storage, handling, transportation, and marketing of goods along the supply chain. Green packaging, then, is packaging which is designed, constructed, and used in a manner that generates the least amount of waste and/or maximizes recycle or reuse opportunities at some or all positions along the supply chain (Dixon-Hardy & Curran, 2009).

This study focuses on the particular subset of GSCM known as green packaging. Packaging may be viewed from either the producer's standpoint or the consumer's standpoint. For producers, it is basically a way to safely transport material and goods to the next partner along the supply chain. For consumers, it is a way to identify the maker of the product, its usage, and key features (Ho et al., 2009).

This study also reviews several initiatives that measure reductions in resource consumption related to packaging, primarily focusing on the manufacturing sector. Manufacturing supply chain consists of packaging and transportation of materials ranging from raw natural resources (e.g., iron ore or platinum) to highly processed finished goods, such as artificial hips for surgical implantation, which require special sterilized packaging for safe transport and delivery to the point of use. Packaging materials used in these processes can include paper, corrugated cardboard, glass, various types of plastic, wood, steel, aluminum, rubber, and chemicals such as disinfectants, rust inhibitors, and lubricants.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Across the globe companies, governments, social service organizations, and individual citizens are supporting the adoption of "green" initiatives to aid in the transition to a more sustainable global existence. Many current manufacturing, energy generation, agricultural production, and transportation practices are perceived to be overly harmful to the environment and wasteful of valuable scarce natural resources. The following are various reasons that changes may be implemented (Park et al., 2022):

* To comply with legal requirements

* To pursue operating cost reductions

* To appeal to a particular target market of consumers

* To comply with customer product specifications

* To demonstrate commitment to a popular societal movement

* To gain the support of a particular political constituency

* To satisfy an internal objective to "do the right thing"

* To improve the form, function, or quality of a product or process

Green packaging has received such a significant amount of attention as an opportunity for resource conservation due to the vast amount of packaging used in manufacturing, distribution, and commerce. To give some scale to the subject consider that data collected from FedEx, UPS, and USPS reveals that 165 billion packages are shipped in the U.S. per year which use up cardboard packaging made from approximately 1 billion trees (Peters, 2018).

Figure 1 presents a simplified value chain structure and examples of the multiple different packaging types required to progress through the supply chain from raw material to end consumer. Only the steel intermodal shipping container is considered reusable in this scenario. The rest of the modes are at best recyclable and more likely to be disposed of as waste streams. Three primary stratifications have been identified to facilitate the review of existing published studies of green supply chain and green packaging implementations:

1. Customer and/consumer-oriented adoption assesses the preference or loyalty-enhancing attributes of green packaging initiatives by the customer base and whether other attributes may outweigh greenness.

2. Financial/Performance-oriented adoption involves the impact on the bottom line of companies based on their adoption of GSCM principles in general, with associated applicability to packaging improvements.

3. Process-oriented adoption specifically reviews initiatives to replace expendable packaging with returnable/reusable packaging and evaluates the net overall benefit/cost to the company.

Table 1 presents a summary of research studies on green supply chain packaging implementations.

Customer and Consumer-Oriented Adoption

Many companies pursue environmentally and friendly packaging schemes because their customers have made it clear that they would prefer to buy a product that comes in sustainably produced packaging over a product that does not. But when the sustainable packaging comes at a price penalty to the consumer, it has been found that even if the perceived costs exceed the perceived benefits, the consumer will not act to conserve the environment even if they are sympathetic towards environment (Orzan, et al., 2018).

That study used an online survey of 268 consumers in Romania to assess their attitudes about packaging types, availability of information, sensitivity to price differences, and motivations for buying products in...