Environmental Supply Chain Management: using Life Cycle Assessment to structure supply chains

In recent years increasing attention has been given to environmental supply chain management (ESCM). One of the supporting instruments of ESCM is life cycle assessment (LCA). The idea of integrating LCA into supply chains is gaining more support among research institutes and companies. However, we conclude that there are no guidelines for this integration. In this paper we argue that in-line with a differentiation between environmental care chain strategies and environmental chain performances, a differentiation between types of LCAs should be made; i.e., between compliance-, process- and market-oriented LCAs. To execute these different types of LCAs, the chain structure should be attuned to meet the specific requirements of these types. By discussing case studies, we show that the integration of the different types of LCAs in a chain bring about different chain structures