ECO-EFFICIENCY WITHIN EXTENDED SUPPLY CHAIN

Artigo submetido em fevereiro/2011 e aceito em março/2012 Designers make decisions that ultimately impact on both the economic and environmental performance of the products, and many of these costs and impacts occur across the supply chain. This paper proposes an initial discussion about eco-efficiency concepts applied within extended supply chain (ESC). Eco-efficiency (EE) has the potential to incorporate both environmental and economic improvement by companies of ESC. It is noteworthy that it is an imperative in the current competitive market that companies must be able to manage their entire production chain taking into account environmental issues as an important factor in their decision-making processes. Therefore, it is believed that EE can integrate and strengthen a company’s functions and assist its decision-making processes as well as implement improvements within its ESC. KEY-WORDS: eco-efficiency, extended supply chain, life cycle management