The pressure on manufacturing organizations to adopt benign processes and to
develop greener products has increased significantly over the last decade. As such,
several manufacturing organizations have turned to their suppliers and customers
to find innovative solutions to environmental issues. Using the data from a survey
of the Canadian and United States package printing industry, the linkage between
green supply chain practices and the selection of environmental technologies is
examined. This paper differs from other studies that have linked supply chain
management to environmental technologies as it focuses specifically on green
interactions between organizations in the supply chain. In particular, the paper
explores the possible relation between environmental collaboration and environmental
monitoring in the supply chain and the form of environmental investment
characterized by three categories: pollution prevention, pollution control,
and management systems. The results suggest that environmental collaboration
with suppliers is positively associated with greater investment in pollution
prevention technologies while such collaboration with customers has no
impact on the adoption and the implementation of pollution prevention
technologies. In contrast, environmental collaboration with suppliers is
associated with fewer investments in management systems. Overall, green
supply chain practices with customers have very little impact on environmental
investment decisions.