A Review of Life Cycle Assessment in Green Supply Chain Management

Abstract

Sustainability concepts have revolutionized the attitude of people towards the environment. Earlier supply chains were analyzed only for being cost effective and quick functioning, but now the perspective has broadened, the emphasis has been shifted to environmental impacts it creates on the people and planet. Hence in recent years, academics' interest on greening the supply chains has grown significantly. However, life cycle assessment (LCA), the most widely accepted system analysis tool for the analysis of environmental profile of any product, has surprisingly received less scholarly attention in Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) discipline. A literature review of articles related to LCA application in GSCM can provide useful insights for readers and researchers to conduct further research and bridge the existing gaps. Hence in this review, 77 academic journal papers published on the subject were studied and allocated into six main categories based on their main focuses. Apart from the standard bibliometric techniques the publication data are also analyzed in various dimensions related to the scope of LCA studies. Some interesting results that stemmed from the review are presented as future research recommendations. This study emphasizes the need to advocate the importance of LCA in the boarder GSCM literature. We hope this review could enable practitioners make strategic choices based on the supply chain structure for conducting LCA studies.