Skip to main content
Kent Academic Repository

An integrated environmental and fairtrade labelling scheme for product supply chains

Acquaye, Adolf, Yamoah, F, Feng, K (2014) An integrated environmental and fairtrade labelling scheme for product supply chains. International Journal of Production Economics, 164 . pp. 472-483. ISSN 0925-5273. (doi:10.1016/j.ijpe.2014.12.014) (KAR id:46331)

Abstract

Environmental initiatives such as carbon labelling have been suggested as a driver for achieving sustainable production systems of product supply chains. The paper therefore presents a systematic process of developing an environmental labelling framework as an extension of carbon labelling using the fairtrade certification as a platform to facilitate the process. Using the general theoretical constructs of lifecycle assessments, the framework presented provides insight into the formulation of multi-regional supply chains which has been specifically characterised in this paper for the UK–India–Rest of the World supply chain. The environmental labelling process presented in this paper is based on two key principles; Quantitative Principle in Eco-labelling and the Principle of Whole Lifecycle Perspective and it is used to inform two key stakeholder groups in the supply chain: consumers and supply chain partners.

For consumers, a consistent way of presenting the environmental label information is presented highlighting the supply chain impacts across the indicators of CO2-eq emissions, water consumption and land use in addition to regional contributions to these impacts from a global supply chain perspective. Additionally, communicating the environmental impacts to supply chain partners provides a decision support to take actions to reduce the overall impacts by identifying processes within the global supply chain that needed prioritisation.

Given that fairtrade partnership is based on participatory development and a strict guidelines and standardisation process, it is envisaged that synergies can be derived by integrating environmental labelling with the fairtrade scheme to enhance the environmental sustainability of product supply chains.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2014.12.014
Additional information: Published online 24 Dec 2014
Uncontrolled keywords: Environmental labelling, Carbon emissions; Water Consumption; Land Use; Fairtrade; Sustainability; Global Supply chain,; Product lifecycle assessment
Subjects: H Social Sciences
Divisions: Divisions > Kent Business School - Division > Department of Analytics, Operations and Systems
Depositing User: Adolf Acquaye
Date Deposited: 26 Dec 2014 17:09 UTC
Last Modified: 19 Sep 2023 15:04 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/46331 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Acquaye, Adolf.

Creator's ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0430-2498
CReDIT Contributor Roles:

Yamoah, F.

Creator's ORCID:
CReDIT Contributor Roles:
  • Depositors only (login required):

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.