Information Technology in Supply Chain Management

This article discusses the role of information technology in supply chain management and its impact on the environment. It explores McDonald's initiatives to reduce environmental impacts through sustainable packaging, waste management, and energy efficiency. The article also highlights the importance of environmental management systems in improving company performance.

Running head: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN SUPPLY CHAIIN MANAGEMENT
Information technology in supply chain management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction:
McDonald is aware of the challenges and has announced various environmental
initiatives to improve the environmental impacts of the company. Environmental
management system, is putting efforts in order to reduce its impact on deforestation and
carbon emission. McDonald has taken the initiatives to avoid buying soya that are grown in
the rainforest of Amazon. Deforestation for cattle ranching and farming has caused major
harm to the environment (Ross 2016). The initiatives of McDonald have reduced the
destruction of the rainforest, thereby uplifting the environmental conditions. In order to
reduce the carbon footprint, McDonald has improved the efficiency of use of carbon by
utilizing equipments that are energy efficient and lights with low-energy in all its restaurants.
Mitigation in using energy is essential as it affects the agriculture and cause deforestation,
which results in affecting the environment through emission of green house gas (Ross 2016).
McDonald had tied up with E-CO2 project for measuring the methane emission of the cattle.
This in turn is decreasing the level of methane and green gas level in the environment.
Livestock production accounts for 14.5% of the emission of green house gas (Kshetri 2018).
McDonald is introducing different techniques of farming to mitigate this issue. McDonald is
also buying verified sustainable beef for mitigating the emission of green house gases.
McDonald has also taken initiative to control waste. They have introduced sustainable and
recyclable materials in order to eliminate the issue. In the restaurants in US, McDonald has
stopped using coffee cups that are polystyrene famed. The paper cups have taken over these
cups. Polystyrene cups affect the lives of marine animals and also leads to death. Paper cups
although wastes energy and chemicals for its production. McDonald has also introduced
recycling programs. The restaurants in the UK are turning the waste into electricity (Hugos
2018). McDonald also works with the Environmental Defense Fund for re-using and

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recycling packaging. Thus, the impact on the environment by the activities of McDonald
should be mitigated immediately in order to reduce the affect of the company on
environment.
One of the significant problems that are faced as a result of such changes s that of climate
change. Climate change affects the human civilization in important ways. It leads to the harm
of the human health where by it can be seen that the time when they consume a lot of carbon
dioxide, it interrupts their breathing process in a negative manner. Furthermore, it can be seen
that the other changes of climate that affects the human population occurs in the form of air
pollution. The main component of air pollution is that of water vapor. The water vapor that is
present in the air interferes with the visibility aspect of the human eye. Thus, they become
vulnerable to the element of visibility. Human beings are unable to see and thus, accidents
occur. The main reason for so much of climate change is that of waste disposal. From this it
can be understood that if waste is not properly disposed of, then it would adversely impact
the human population of the earth. In this sense, there is a need to properly dispose of waste
that is produced by the human beings.
One of the important ways in which waste is produced is that of the process of
industrialization. This process of industrialization began in the end of the eighteenth century.
During this time, the scale in which industries were established was too small. However, with
the changes in the human population and as time evolved, many industries were set up. Such
industries affected the human lives in significant ways. One of the ways in which industries
contributed to the growth and development of the society was that it helped to increase the
economic production of the society. However, industrialization also led to the generation of a
lot of waste.

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Outlook of McDonald in protecting the environment:
McDonald is switching to environmentally friendly company. They are changing their
packaging material and in turn offering recycling in all the restaurants worldwide. They are
responsibly using their scale for the betterment of the environment and have an immense
impact on the environment across the globe (Talwar 2018). They are planning to run the
biggest chain of restaurants by achieving 100 percent of the packaging from recycled and
renewable sources by the end of 2025, which will ensure the reforestation. Currently,
McDonald is using 64% of fiber-based packaging. It is also planning to eliminate foamed
packaging from the global supply chain. McDonald works with the experts in the industry,
environmental groups and local governments for improving their infrastructure, redesigning
the packaging and organizing recycling programs (Chen, Preston and Swink 2015). They are
also planning to educate and train the employees and the customers for a sustainable
environment. McDonald being the global company has the scope to be transformational. The
waste management of McDonald has saved an estimate of dollar 6 million a year giving rise
to environmental benefits. McDonald has also fought the rise of the fatal, dangerous
antibiotic-resistant bacteria known as superbugs by utilizing its global reach. The company
has eliminated the use of the drugs in the U.S market by maintaining standard of meat
gathered from the supply chain (Allen and Carlson 2018).
The role of environmental management systems in company performance:
An environmental Management system should be incorporated in every company’s
management system, which will include planning activities, organizational structure,
practices, responsibilities, processes, procedures, implementing, resources in order to
develop, achieving and maintaining the environmental policy of the company (Shamah et al.
2018). The development of the environmental policy helps the company to maintain the
company’s commitment to the environmental improvements. Environmental management

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system includes corporate activities, processes, services and products that directly or
indirectly affect the environment. Such activities, improves the reputation of the company
and its brand image. The activities of the environment management system give the company
a competitive advantage in the market (Boyland, Kavanagh-Safran and Halford 2015).
Programs organized by the environmental management system include policies and
procedures that help in reducing waste which in turn affect the company reputation. This also
enhances the performance and involves every employee to execute the process successfully.
They include systems that identify and correct issues. Preventive measures help the company
to effective reduce its bad affects on the people and in turn the environment, that increases
sales per day of the company on a global basis (Bernhardtet al. 2015). The system supports
all the board members including all the staffs of the company, giving employee motivation to
perform better for the company. It also provides training of the staffs through various
environmental awareness programs. It helps in reducing environmental incidents and
improves reputation of the organization. The company’s get a marketing advantage and in
some cases, Environment management system becomes the fundamental requirement of a
company. It also helps the company by increasing the revenue generation and in turn the
profits of the company and lowering the costs (Cohen and Munoz 2017). It helps in
attracting more customers, shareholders and investors. Training of the employees gives rise to
knowledgeable and focused workforce. Environmental practices affect the financial
performance of the company. As the costs and efficiency of energy is directly related to
operational costs, the financial performance gets directly or indirectly affected. Thus,
significant positive impacts have been measured through strong environmental management
system and negative results were seen for weak environmental management system in a
company.
Improved awareness can be achieved through:

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 Changes to staff job description
 Educating the employees of the company through various induction programs.
 Managing of the contract agreements
 Focusing on the responsibility of the senior authorities.
These above criteria directly relates to the environmental performance.
Public Policy
The term public policy can be defined as the laws, which is framed by the government
in order to maintain the wants and requirements of the citizens. The term deals with mandate,
regulation and laws, which is established in terms of political affairs (Karanth 2017). To
stimulate the environmental management system it is a trend in the growing economy to
stimulate the environmental improvement. The current situation is one which is addressed by
the media specification in which the environment faces problems and are administered by the
federal and state agencies which is also organized by the special media.
Environmental Management System Promotion
The system is changing now days and it relies heavily on the technology, which are
permitted by the individuals to facilitate the governing laws in the organization. The
government body has used the traditional factors in enforcing the laws that was being able to
bring to ensure compliance, the members of the country and the environmental groups. These
have built their own lawsuits to compel compliance. While the existing system of the
governing laws have ensured the firms which now devotes large amount of resources to
pollution control and maintaining the sustainability of the environment. The method of
improvement has brought about changes in the environmental quality, which shows that the
current situation of the organization has reached to its limitations (Ma 2018). The current

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statutes and policy have imposed on the duplicative requirement of the firm and creates to fix
their achievements of environmental gain at much lower cost. These types of regulations
limits the firm to seek new innovative approach of creating waste because it is in the
knowledge of firm to control the environment, reply more on the source reduction and move
forward while following the norms of the environment. There are many government
problems which remains unregulated and unregulatable. The organization is implementing
the current political policy at low cost that requires new ideas about achieving the
environmental policy benefits.
Under the policy of Environmental Management System (EMS) it has been coined as
a new idea. Under this management system the firm sets up its own management system with
respect to the impact on the environment and establish on the planning, operational procedure
and staffing which are acquired to achieve the goals. Within the framework of EMS the
company develops an internal program which lays its concern on the environmental impact
such as, use of the resources, disposal technique and prevention of the pollution. This
maintenance system can be accessed by a third part, which can check the company’s system.
The company sets its environmental impact on the basis of ISO 14001, the international
standard for the operations of the environmental management systems (Ma 2018). The
current environmental system can assist in the overcoming of the limitation in the
environmental regulation by providing a rigorous process for the organization to search for
new ways in reducing the environmental impact at lower cost. The firms can identify their
current situation more precisely with regards to resources and seek alternative processes.
The organizations that maintain the regulation of ISO 14001 standard must seek for
improvement, and holding a belief that may go beyond the existing regulations and norms.
With the help of the public policy the promotional strategy can be implemented on the
environmental management plan. The public policy has to encourage the kind of

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sustainability development with commitment and dedication that makes the environmental
factor effective instead of just encouraging the firm to implement the policy for certifiable
systems. The organization will perhaps in the way of public policy will need to encourage
these organizations to exploit the environmental management system. The reason of
implementing is already started by the firm. The biggest challenge for the McDonald
company will be to face the challenges of implementing the potential benefit of EMS for the
environment as well as for the business.
The following policies can encourage to wide spread the adoption on the
environmental management systems. The three categories are: the policies which reduces the
cost f implementation of the environmental management system, secondly the policies that
increase the private gains of these systems and lastly the public and private policy should
contribute to the requirement of the management systems. There can be other policies such as
the scope to encourage the firm instantly, the political and legal acceptability and its
administrative feasibility. The law can help the organization in maintaining the public
regulation, a general education on conserving the environment, subsidies ore tax credit could
be included as well, enforcement forbearance with regard to criminal offence, regulation
flexibilities and public requirement. Therefore, McDonald can impose their environmental
policy by maintaining the regulations of the environment and converse the waste which is
generated by the firm and consumers. Recycling of the product should be mandate so that
there is less waste generation.

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Suitable environmental management plan:
The environment Management should contain all the methods of mitigation for every
factorof the environment because of all the increased activities during the operation,
construction and the entire cycle of life in order to minimize the adverse impacts of the
environment. It should also include the environmental monitoring plan for compiling all the
various regulations of the environment. It will include all the steps that are required in case of
any accidents. The environmental management plan is a specific plan developed to ensure the
appropriate implementation of the task without bothering the structure of the environment
where the subcontractors, consultants and the contractors understand the risks of pursuing the
project and take reasonable and strict measures to mitigate the risks arising during the
execution of the project.
The environmental management plan includes four elements:
 Commitment and policy: The management will be aware of certain things before
implementing the plan. This should incorporate the challenges related to water, land,
air and noise.
 Planning: This stage of the plan involves the identification of the impacts of the
environment, the legal requirements and settings the various objectives of the
environment.
 Implementation: This section of the plan consists of the resources that are available to
the society, accountability of the sub-contractors, contractors and consultants, training
the operational staff, who are associated with the facilities of environmental control
and documentations of all the measures to be taken.
 Measurement and evaluation: This section of the plan includes monitoring,
counteractive actions and keeping of the records.

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Environment management plan for Air environment:
 Construction Phase: In order to mitigate the impacts during the construction phase of
the project, the measures are to be taken and implemented.
1. A dust control plan
2. Procedural changes to construction activities
 Operation phase: In order to eliminate the impacts of the various pollutants from
vehicular traffic, during this phase of the project, the following steps are to be taken:
1. Emission control measures
2. Vehicular emission control measures
3. Development of Greenbelt.
Environmental management system for noise environment:
 Construction Phase: In order to eliminate the impacts of noise coming the equipments
of the construction during the construction phase, the following measures are to be
taken:
1. Time of operation: Noisy equipment for construction is not allowed to use
at the night time
2. Job rotation and Hearing protection: Workers working in the high noise
areas should be allotted tasks on shift basis. Workers should be provided
with muffs and earplugs in order to eliminate the. impact of noise
pollution.
 Operation phase: In order to eliminate the impacts of noise from the diesel generator
that are set during the operational phase, the following measures are to be taken:
1. Adoption of technologies that control noise emission
2. Greenbelt development

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Environmental management system for water environment
 Construction phase: In order to prevent degradation and maintain the quality of the
water source, adequate measures needs to be taken. The surface run-off and the
uncontrolled water flow into any water body needs to be checked. The management
measures to be taken for protecting the water from pollution during the construction
phase are:
1. Avoid excavation during the monsoon season.
2. In order to avoid soil erosion, care has to be taken
3. Common toilets are constructed and the sullage needs to be channelized
into the respective septic tanks in order to restrict it from entering into the
fresh water bodies.
4. In order to prevent contamination of ground and surface water by grease or
oil, leak-proof containers are to be used for storing and transporting grease
and oil. The area of handling of these grease and oil needs to be effectively
impervious in order to avoid accidents. Any wash off from this area is
drained through proper system of drainage.
5. Collection and settling of the storm water, prohibition of equipment wash
downs. Preventing the loss of soil and toxic release from the sites of
construction are very essential in order to minimize water pollution.
6. The loading and the stacking area are to be provided with garland drains
that are provided with baffles for preventing the run-off from the
construction site and to enter any water body.
 Operation Phase: In this phase, conservation and development of water measures are
to be taken which should include the possible potential for harvesting rainwater. The
measures to be adopted are:

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1. Development of water source
2. Minimizing the consumption of water
3. Promoting the reuse of water after treatment and development of closed
loop systems from various water streams.
Environmental management system for land environment
 Construction phase: The activities of construction produces wastes like debris,
biomass from activities of land clearing, wastes that are produced from the temporary
make shift tents for the labors and also hazardous waste that needs to be removed in
order to prevent land pollution. Management should consider this to be very essential
during the construction phase (Panayotou 2016).
 Operational phase: The four R of waste- Reduction, Reuse, Recycling and Recovery
should be considered by the management to eliminate solid wastes. Regular meetings
with the public to increase awareness should be conducted in order to involve the
individuals in appropriate segregation and storage techniques. The environment
management plan for the land wastes focus on majorly three components during the
waste management system life cycle that is collection and transportation, treatment or
disposal and closure and post-closure care of treatment facility.
Environmental Policy
Environmental policy can be explained as the commitment of an organization
or government with regard to the laws, policy and regulations and other policy
mechanism concerning to the environmental issues (Keeley and Scoones 2014). The
issues are generally related to air and water pollution, ecosystem management, water
pollution and waste management. The environmental issues generally arise from the
above factors. Due to the current state of the economy,the organization sets a priority

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on the environmental policy. There are many issues that the public faces in the
organization in this century are due to the climatic change, ozone depletion,
sustainable management system, lack of fossil fuel and resource depletion (Eden
2016).
The policy of the environment is the organizations declaration to stick to its
commitment towards serving the environment. It is the first step towards decreasing
the organization footprint be long lasting (Loomis, et al. 2013). The policy should
have specific consideration towards growth, expansion and long term goals. When
organization sets up the regulation it should keep in mind that the policy should be
short and simple and it focused on commitments which are relevant, realistic and
achievable to the firms activities and practices. According to the organizations policy
it si important to educate the staff and its consumers regarding environmental policy
and make sure they commit to the norms and regulations. It should consider that the
policy should have management date and signature and a copy should be posted
within the area of the firm. It will result in enhancing the image of the company by
demonstrating the corporate and social responsibilities and the commitment of the
organization to reduce the waste, which it generates on a regular basis.
There are few of the environmental policy which is designed by the
organization toward conserving the environment:
 Incorporate: the company should include all the policy which are decided according
to the suitable concern and impact. To incorporate the laws the subordinate should
design the rules and regulation according to the needs and requirement of the
environment.
 Promote: the organization has can promote its awareness of conserving the
environment by placing banners on the walls of its outlet, instruct the consumers

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through that medium,and encourage them to work in the same manner in other
places. It should also promote is awareness on the concern of the environment to
carry out the responsibility of not polluting the surrounding environment or water
(Lehmann and Joseph 2015)
 Train, educate and inform: training should be conducted by theorganization to
teach the employees in reducing the waste from food packets, paper pages and plastic
straws.
Reduce waste: the reduction off waste can be opted by different initiative program, which
takes place in the organization. The training program include instructs the techniques of
including the recycling of paper, cardboards, plastic containers, beverage containers and other
material which are accepted by a recycling providers (Edenhofer and Kowarsch 2015).
Purchase: environmentally grounded product are based on the purchases which have a
selected items including : durability, toxicity, use of recycled or re-furbished materials,
different technique of reduced energy and water consumption, reduced packaging and ability
to recycle and refill at the end of its usage.
 Regularly communicate: there should be regular communication with the workers
of the company discussing about the clients activity and supporting the customer.
 Avoid:the unnecessary usage of hazardous waste should be avoided and should seek
alternatives. These small steps will facilitate in managing the unwanted waste.
 Strive:to stick to the environmental laws the organization should aim at its
performance by occasionally reviewing the status of the environmental policy in
establishing the current and future activities. The method of safe disposal option for
resources such as e-waste and hazardous waste.

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The benefits of developing environmental policy for McDonald is a statement
about the administration’s environment position and value. The ISO 14001 standard
government that the policy in the organization global environment presentation and
course formally expertise by top management(Newig and Koontz 2014). The
organization publically advertise that it has taken into account the environmental
performance and adopted the best practice and I working towards improving its
environmental factor. It is relevant for the organization to advertise the
environmental status and objectives of the company to all participants. It should me
made a fact that the environmental regulations should be reviewed by the company
on a regular basis. It should be reviewed if there have been any changes in the
organization or any other planned changes that leads to significant issue. The annual
review should be made an further the implementation should me shaped for the
betterment of the organization (Percival et al. 2017)
The internal organization looks after the operation and demonstrates a
commitment to manage the environmental impact that help to improve the reputation
with the current customer and other subordinate body. It can be a certain situation
where there can occur a challenge in climatic condition or a crisis in the finances.
The creation of the environmental policy provides a perfect opportunity to view a
daily basis activity which are concerned with the activities of environmental
responsibilities and meet legal requirements. This policy also helps the employee to
be updated with the environmental characters and responsibilities, reduce the cost
through reduced consumption and excess wastage and helps excepting more of
money by refining the efficiency of the process.
The creation of the environmental policy brings an in-house assessment risk
that should bring into consideration many of the issues related to the environmental

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factor of the company. the policy are founded by the senior team of the organization
where it is considered that the employee are experienced in the field of protecting the
environment. The staff and the stakeholder in the company clearly states the business
procedure and the aim which it has developed while implementing the plans and
goals financial year.

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