Environmental sustainability and measurement of environmental sustainability performance in supply chain

The concept of sustainability has been widely accepted since the 1970s, and has been conceptualized in the "Sustainable Development" model, as the adverse effects of economic development efforts have turned into a global problem. Along with the environmental and ecological movements on the international scale, sustainability of economic activites has gained importance. Within the current free market system, economic activities are carried out by the enterprises. Therefore, in order to achieve sustainability, businesses need to follow sustainable policies that are environmentally compatible throughout the supply chain, which consists of procurement, production, marketing and distribution. These policies take place in the green and lean approaches. Sustainable approaches are important not only because of the conservation of the natural environment but also because of the increase in resource efficiency. For this reason, enterprises are adopting modern supply chain management practices and are turning into sustainable policies. Because legal requirements, consumer expectations, and commercial targets force the business to be environmentally friendly in all of its supply chain activities. The sustainability of a supply chain at the environmental dimension can be understood by measuring the environmental impact of the activities that the company has performed throughout the supply chain. This shows up the environmental performance of the supply chain of the business. In addition to the fact that the indicators of this performance vary according to the structure of the business and the field of activity, the policies and processes following also affect performance. In this framework, an application was given place by mentioning the related performance indicators and the effects of the applications in the operation on environmental performance.