Green manufacturing roadmap on the sustainability of manufacturing industries in Malaysia

Abstract

Climate change is no more a fantasy subject portray in sci-fi movies. Climate change is real, and it is caused by the increasing amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. Reducing the amount of CO2 can reduce the risk of climate change. If the unprecedented changes are not made soon, there will be an irreversible damage to the planet such as global warming, drought, typhoon, flood and many other risks. Since the industrial sector is responsible as the third highest producer of CO2, reducing the carbon emission from this sector will significantly lessen the risk. As Malaysia is gearing into green sustainability environmental lifestyle, this research wish to study how the manufacturing management are doing for this challenge. With this intention, this study investigated the effort of manufacturing industries in Malaysia in practicing Green Manufacturing. In the first place, the government has outlined many regulations as a catalyst to boost the participation of the manufacturing industries to improve their operations to be more environmentally friendly. Some organization which is having business affairs with developed countries has practiced green culture in their organizations with the aid of green education. Though many organizations has taken a proactive step towards greening their activities, there are still many others who are reluctant to take part in the green calls. As though accepting the calling for greening would cause the increase in their cost and would reduce their profit. This perception could be caused by the lack of awareness on environmental sustainability. Thus, this study aims to see how the green awareness could was affected by the Government Regulations, Organisational Culture, and Education, and further the analysis to see the effect of Green Manufacturing operations impacts on Financial Performance and Green Performance. The Green Manufacturing concerns on all actions that can reduce the environmental impact during the operations of manufacturing the products, comprises of the green design of products, the use of environmentally friendly raw materials, eco-friendly packing, distribution, and reuse after the end of life of a product. The research was performed quantitatively using surveys, and the analysis of this study was done by adopting multivariate statistical analysis; Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). SEM was chosen because it is able to calculate the standardized path coefficient and correlation strength of the causal relationship for the objectives of the study. A questionnaire with 68 items were distributed and 355 sample size were collected from manufacturing industries. After all the 11 constructs were validated by the model fit in the measurement model, the structural analysis was done, and the research hypothesis was concluded. The result of the study shows that the Government Regulations, Organisational Culture, and Education are statistically significant towards the green awareness, just as the green awareness has statistically significant effect on the implementation of Green Management and consequently, the Green Management has statistically significant effect on Financial Performance and Green Performance. Finally, the Green Manufacturing roadmap has been established as a guideline for the policymaker to promote environmental sustainability.