Preliminary Study of Hazardous Materials Management: An Optimization Model in the Context of Green Supply Chain Management

Although the general framework of supply chain management usually focuses on the production process, as well as the delivery of the product to the market and the consumers, the treatment and disposal of waste materials is usually given little deliberation. Because of their inherent risk, all materials can be seen as hazardous in certain situations such as the various stages of the lifecycle, from extraction to final disposal. Especially, the public risk and the carbon footprint in the final disposal stage are still very high compared to other stages. However, current supply chain management measures consider less of the environmental risk and impact. Here, based on the analysis outlined above, this paper provides a novel optimization model for hazardous materials management in the context of green supply chain management, using dynamic optimized techniques to reduce the public risk and the associated carbon footprint whilst minimizing the economical cost. Moreover, an example is given to illustrate how this dynamic optimization model works, as well as the limitation of the model has also been discussed, which lays a foundation for the further research.