Supply Chain Management for Sustainable Development Goals

Running Head: SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
Supply Chain Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
Topic - How supply chains can contribute towards meeting the Sustainable Development
Goal 'RESPONSIBLE CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION
The responsible consumption and production is a necessary step to reduce the negative
impact on the climate, environment and also on the health of people. It increases the net welfare
for the economic activities by the reduction of resource usage, pollution, degradation along with
increasing the standard of life. The minimization of the waste in the process of developing the
economy is more important. That growth which contaminates the environment again thrives the
development backwards (Silvestre 2015). It is found that every year, almost 1.3 billion tons of
food is completely wasted. More than 22 % of the food sectors account the emission of the
greenhouse gas from the forest conversion into the farmland. On the contrary, 2 billion people
are overweight. Only 3 % of the entire world’s water is fresh and it is being used faster than
other consumption. Studies suggest that if people of the world start using the energy deficient
lightbulbs, annually US$120billion would be saved (Fritz, Schöggl and Baumgartner 2017).
The purpose of this essay is to explore the concept of responsible production and
consumption in the supply chain management. The main arguments of the essay revolve around
the efficient management of the shared natural resources, the way of disposing, the pollutants,
toxic waste are highly impacts the attaining of the goals. It is also extremely important for the
encouragement of the industries, consumers and businesses to reduce the waste by recycling. It
supports the development of the countries and move towards sustainable consumption by the
year 2030(Rueda, Garrett and Lambin 2017). It will also analyze what are the ways by which the
supply chain can become sustainable and contribute to the maximum

2SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
The supply chain sustainability is a blooming topic nowadays. It helps to keep the earth
sustainable and people are being extremely aware of that. The concept of sustainability is to
support the ecological balance of future through not being harmful to the environment and
deplete the natural resources (Chin, Tat and Sulaiman 2015). The global supply chain is
responsible for the impacts on earth such as water pollution, long term damage to the ecosystem,
deforestation, loss of biodiversity, hazardous air emissions along with the energy use and
greenhouse gas emissions. Hence, it is becoming essential to combine the choices which are
environmentally friendly in the management of supply chain (Fahimnia and Jabbarzadeh 2016).
The costs of supply chain also leave huge impact on the environment. It is because the carbon
footprints are left on the environment while delivering the products to the end users. The
sustainability of the supply chain will be a crucial part in making the sustainable development
goals a part of the local business (Wilhelm et al. 2016). The sustainable development goals when
made a part of the local business will support the realities of the planet and serve the markets in a
better way through the products and the operations. The supply chain has been considered as the
biggest challenge to improve the performance of sustainability.

3SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
Image 1 - The sustainable development goals
Source -(Rueda, Garrett and Lambin 2017)
The business organizations are supposed to be looking into the matter of supply chain as
an integral part of the business operations. They must take up the initiative to address the issues
emerging from the sustainability (Silvestre 2015). The Global Compact of the United Nations
helps the organizations to recognize the ways of addressing these challenges. In the global
context, the supply chains are becoming highly complex and it has been found that in the
changing world, a resilient supply chain can easily contribute to the attainment of sustainable
development. The quality of the technique applied in the supply chain, the cost effectiveness and
the sustainability is connected with the business procurement.