Universidad Anáhuac Cancún

Lic. Gastronomía

“Responsabilidad Social y Sustentabilidad”

Andrea Sofía Jimenez Guerrero

Luis Alonso Martínez Avalos

22/09/19
 Impact on humans and the environment

On this essay, I would present ideas and thoughts about the reading “sustainable supply
chain management” from Peter Lund- Thomsen and Lynn Oxborrow. According to the
chapter read, humans are in a tough spot especially since 1980’s thanks to the rapid
globalization of supply chains aided by various technological and socio-economic
developments, where social and environmental sustainability becomes a concern to
everybody, to business, workers, community, and environment.

Before taking this essay any deeper on thoughts, you should first know what’s the first
definition you’ll have to learn to understand this whole new analysis of “sustainable supply
chain management” book.

What is sustainable supply chain management? “The management of upstream and

downstream relationships with suppliers and customers to deliver superior customer value
at less cost to the supply chain as a whole’ (Christopher 2011: 3) therefore we can say that
this is a whole new marketing and business program, which innovates over time.

Even though this concept sounds amazing, they are several serious problems with it, such as
social and environmental sustainability where

“Social sustainability relates to international labor standards such as securing workers the
minimum wage, reasonable working hours and overtime payment, the right to collective
bargaining, freedom of association, and health and safety at supplier factories.
Environmental codes include managing product stewardship, production and logistics
throughout the supply chain to minimize the negative impacts of using energy, materials,
water, and harmful substances while reducing emissions and waste.” (Oxborrow, IREP)

Today, we see people caring more about this problem, where for example the use of plastics
has been reduced exponentially, the saving and care for water has become a global concern,
and people are taking better care of their employees and finally make them feel like they
belong and they are not just “there” and many other actions are taking care of.
All of this thanks to a series of media exposes in the early 1990s where people stipulated
that various companies were using child labor, forced labor with excessively overtime work
and exploitation, where according to the book and the speculation business such as Nike
and Levi, were using these ways.

I strongly believe that this intervention was strictly necessary because people are humans
and not machines. Think about the past phones did you ever considered using your phone
nonstop all day every day, no, because if you do that the phone will eventually crash, and
that’s what would happen to people if we do these exploitation ways on jobs. Thanks to
technology phones could be more resistant and you could now use it 24hr a day, but as I
said before humans are not machines and people need to be more empathic and see that
what we do to “gain profit” may affect significantly the environment and the community.

The book stated that “well-paid, well-regulated jobs with high levels of social security in
Europe and North America were now outsourced to countries in Latin America, Asia and
Africa whose governments might not care about the well-being, health and safety of their
workforce” (Oxborrow, IREP), even though statistics may confirm this statement, I believe
that instead of making this allegation, people should actually help the cause and not to think
that Latin America, Asia, and Africa are the only ones in problem.

Europe and North America are the 2 continents that have the most industry build
companies, where they may be “helping” people but how’s there impact on the
environment? The USA produced 76 million tons of pollution (Agency, 2018) which is a very
significant amount of pollution damaging the health and safety not only of the worker but
on the entire community.

Relevant SDGs, such as no poverty, decent work, and economic growth, eliminating forced
labor and abolishing child labor is being enforced by the corporate code of conduct “which
specify the social and environmental conditions under which goods and services are to be
produced at supplier factories in developing countries.” (Oxborrow, IREP).

Maybe this code of conduct is a relief for many workers since it helps that suppliers must
employ workers on a regular contract, that workers must be paid the minimum wage and
for any overtime work, that no child labor is employed, and a host of other similar criteria,
but people need to urgently implant this policy everywhere and not be fooled by people
who say they do but they just cover reality with money.

To conclude this essay is very important to highlight that even though sustainable supply
chain has its values and ways, it doesn’t matter what they estipulate if the human doesn’t
agree and are empathic to the matter. Luckily, we are beginning to enter the era of “caring”
where actions as reverse supply chain can encompass the collection of packaging materials
for re-use and then corporate code of conduct helps us with the human advisor treatment
for individuals.

Bibliografía
Agency, U. S. (2018). EPA. Obtenido de https://www.epa.gov/air-trends/air-quality-national-
summary

Oxborrow, P. L. (s.f.). IREP. Obtenido de

http://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/30087/1/7323_Oxborrow.pdf

Oxborrow, P. L. (s.f.). IREP. Obtenido de

http://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/30087/1/7323_Oxborrow.pdf