Sustainability of Supply Chains

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 91, University of South Africa (School of business and leadership), course: Master Business Leadership, language: English, abstract: Supply chain management is the integration and management of a complex network of activities involved in delivering a complete product to the end-user or customer. It is a common belief that all stages in a product life cycle will have an impact on supply chain biodiversity burden, from resource extraction, manufacturing, use and reuse, final recycling. This is based on the fact that the environmental agenda has become increasingly important for the Government of South Africa, and is slowly reflected in growing legislation to counter negative impacts on the environment. The governments primary targets are the building, construction, and water sector; there is a belief for considerable scope for improvements. There are concerns with regards to the environment and this has led the government to also include sustainability, this covers ecology, economic, social and cultural considerations from a South African perspective. Rand Water as a state-owned enterprise has realised the importance of sustainability issues by formulating, evaluating and verifying relevant environmental requirements in its supply chain policy for the development of its current and future products. New tenders before being issued to the market, a list of requirements are stipulated in a way that enables them to be fulfilled by the service providers and verified by Rand Water officials on submission. Rand Water is busy conducting ways to modify its project management practices to be environmentally friendly as they continue in its quest for sustainability compliance. The proposed route towards dematerialized and detoxified goods and operations can be summarized by the four R‟s: Reduce, Repair, Reuse, and Recycle.