Use of environmental requirements in the supply chain relations: some experiences from Poland and Sweden.

Abstract

Growing number of ISO 14001 certifications worldwide creates new possibilities for organizations to benefits from the global recognition of the standard. One of them is unequivocally the use of ISO14001 certificate as one of conditions for supply chain cooperation. Such situation pulls many enterprises into implementation of the systems for the bare reason of fulfilling the requirement, abreast to creating new control structures for supply chain relations maintenance. While this continues, the reality check pulls research and business communities to realize that requiring the bare certification is not enough to assure the proper level of environmental performance of actors in question. The main goal of the study was to evaluate the gap between the encountered practice of suppliers management and accommodating of this issues within the existing environmental management systems. The status of environmental requirements in selected elements of supply chains was investigated, comparing the present practice in Poland and Sweden. In the same time the application of environmental management systems in terms of originating the requirements, their management and control was further explored. The results were projected on the possibilities of functional upgrade of the EMS to the function of the supply chain management tool