Green supply chain management: manufacturing a Canadian perspective

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Business Benefits of GSCM Practices

Best–in–Class (BiC) firms are defined as businesses that achieve positive environmental benefits in the two main GSCM practices specific to the firms' sector. For manufacturers in general, these benefits are reduced energy usage and lowered GHG emissions in distribution activities. Of the BiC manufacturers, 80 percent noted improvements in distribution costs, customer retention and distribution efficiency, and 90 percent of BiC firms reported an improvement in compliance processes (Figure 7). In each case, half of BiC firms showed a 20–50 percent improvement. Other business benefits include improved risk management, greater access to foreign markets, increased sales, and enhanced differentiation in distribution services (See Annex 1 for sector–specific business benefits).

Figure 7: Business benefits — BiC manufacturers 1

Figure 7:  Business benefits - BiC manufacturers (the link to the long description is located below the image)

The business benefits differ within specific manufacturing industries; for example, the most commonbenefits for BiC automotive manufacturers are improved access to foreign markets, greater customer retention,and increased sales. For BiC aerospace manufacturers, the most commonly reported improvement was in access to foreign markets, and for industrial electronic manufacturers it was in customer retention. For CPG manufacturers, it was in compliance processes.