Flexible Work Arrangements for Green Manufacturing

Background

It is hard to pinpoint when and where the green manufacturing movement emerged. Researchers hold divergent views as to the origin of the concept. However, Rehman and Shrivastava (2013) traced the emergence of green manufacturing to the 1980s and 1990s in Germany. This period marks the beginning of eco-consciousness in the global manufacturing process. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed a deliberate effort made by the policymakers in Germany to ensure that manufacturing firms comply with the green regulation standard if they were to compete in the European market (Rehman & Shrivastava, 2013). White (2020) argues that environmentalists have long been advocating for an eco-conscious approach in every aspect of human life; however, the idea of “going green” became a global discourse many years ago. The author affirmed that the 1970s witnessed a small minority of people adopting “green behaviour” such as the use of solar water heaters and wind turbines. These minority people were referred to as early adopters of technology (White, 2020). The 21st century has seen a huge demand for eco-friendly products (Atiku, 2019; Fields & Atiku, 2017). This is associated with why global manufacturing firms have seen the need to adopt green manufacturing practices.

Tricoire (2019) suggests that “green” is not just a hollow word; but implies tangible measures to promote sustainable practices in manufacturing facilities, across the supply chain, and via the customer base. Sustainable manufacturing is also used to denote green manufacturing. As discussed in the next section of this chapter, sustainability is a broader concept than the simple act of analysing and changing the environmental performance of manufacturing processes and systems (Paul, Bhole & Chaudhari, 2014).