User:Gndala/sandbox

The supply chain of a manufacturing organisation has a deep and extraordinarily varied environmental impact. These impacts arise not only from raw materials and component purchases, supplier manufacturing processes or logistics aarangements, but can also include final product disposal and even the siting of supplier plants. Given the strategic importance and the scale of organisational buying, a range of possibilities for environmental initiatives exist in the supply chain. These begin with the product, component or raw material to be purchased, where the buying company could stipulate minimum standards that the purchased product has to fulfil. For example, a paper-maker can insist the woodpulb in buys conforms to recognised standards of forest management rather than being made from clear-cutting an entire forest, or an electronic company can require its supplier to avoid certain harmful heavy metals in the supplied products. Other product based environmental initiatives can aim at by products of supplied input such as recycling packaging or reducing waste.