Drivers and barriers in the supply chain - The importance of understanding the complexity of recycling in the industrial system

The basic objectives of current EU waste policy are to prevent waste and promote re-use, recycling and recovery to reduce negative environmental impact (2008/98/EC). In this paper, we focus on drivers and barriers for sustainable development by decreasing amount of waste and increasing material efficiency. Main target is to understand what are the most efficient drivers for environmental friendly decision making for reasonable consumption and use of raw materials. Environmental control instruments usually mean those actions the regulatory authority uses to control and limit environmentally harmful behavior of companies. A major change in the environmental control system took place in the 1980s with the focus moving from specific environmental issues to the environment as a whole. The environmental control system i.e. the legal (administrative), economic and informative instruments focuses on prevention. Before and still, the legislation is one of the main drivers in improving material efficiency. In this paper, we focus on drivers and barriers for effective industrial material use, and mainly on drivers. The objective of this study is to analyze how the drivers are working and are there any possibilities to influence on those. Our aim is also to introduce few examples of the existing supply chains and the drivers for better environmental performance and material efficiency. These examples are also compared with ideal reference scenarios. Our main research question in this article is: "Are the financial issues the most important driver for environmental friendly strategic decisions?" In addition, retell the story from another perspective: "The most important barrier for environmental friendly innovations seem to be the investment cost, the high risk involved in committing capital to unproven technology." Other drivers, like the corporate social responsibility, stakeholder pressure, and general public pressure, will also affect the final decision. This article is based on research projects and literature.