How supply chain coordination affects the environment: a carbon footprint perspective

Environmental responsibility has become an important part of doing business. Government regulations and customers' increased awareness of environmental issues are pushing supply chain entities to reduce the negative influence of their operations on the environment. In today's world, companies must assume joint responsibility with their suppliers for the environmental impact of their actions. In this paper, we study coordination between a buyer and a vendor under the existence of two emission regulation policies: cap-and-trade and tax. We investigate the impact of decentralized and centralized replenishment decisions on total carbon emissions. The buyer in this system faces a deterministic and constant demand rate for a single product in the infinite horizon. The vendor produces at a finite rate and makes deliveries to the buyer on a lot-for-lot basis. Both the buyer and the vendor aim to minimize their average annual costs resulting from replenishment set-ups and inventory holding. We provide decentralized and centralized models for the buyer and the vendor to determine their ordering/production lot sizes under each policy. We compare the solutions due to independent and joint decision-making both analytically and numerically. Finally, we arrive at coordination mechanisms for this system to increase its profitability. However, we show that even though such coordination mechanisms help the buyer and the vendor decrease their costs without violating emission regulations, the cost minimizing solution may result in increased carbon emission under certain circumstances.