The Green Multiplier

Abstract

Having established that the supply chain management function plays an increasingly important role in a financial sense, this chapter will ask whether its growing importance and increasingly strategic outlook can be matched by an equally striking contribution to environmental protection. Market-based environmental initiatives often focus on the consumer and advocate a form of green marketing (Peattie, 2001; Polonsky and Rosenberger, 2001), yet consumer spending is dwarfed by industrial buying. In the mid-1990s, UK consumers spent an estimated £400 billion annually, whereas purchasing by private-sector companies amounted to more than £ 750 billion¹ (Green et al., 1996). A focus on corporate buying and supply chain management hence provides an important complement to an environmental protection perspective that centres around the green consumer.

‘Specifically with the supply chain, the important thing is to mentor the supply chain from the top. And they can obviously mentor us from the other end, through customers who are in different industries.’

Product steward, telecommunication equipment manufacturer