Developing Strategies for Green Supply Chain Management

he fi eld of supply chain management has more recently directed its atten- tion to the role of the supply chain in both (a) impacts to the natural environment and (b) the generation of environmental performance change. This shift in our expectations for the supply chain has arisen from growing social pressure, legislative changes around packaging and end-of-life goods, identifi ed supply chain risks, and increasing use of envi- ronmental requirements being cascaded from customers to suppliers. Several years of research into the occurrence of green-supply-chain-management activity (GSCM) has led to a general ac- ceptance of its relevance and purpose. At this point in the fi eld's development, however, there is substantial scope for improving our understanding of poten- tial strategies of GSCM rather than just a series of related greening practices without a defi nite purpose. Owing to increasing and rapid developments in the fi eld of green supply chain management, we describe an evolving set of distinct supply chain strategies in support of this type of activity and propose some directions for the future. In the manner of Fisher (1997) —what might be the most appropriate GSCM strategy for a particular product, process, or industry context?