Green Supplier Selection Criteria: From

a Literature Review to a Flexible

Framework for Determination
of Suitable Criteria

Izabela Ewa Nielsen, Narges Banaeian, Paulina Golińska,

Hossein Mobli and Mahmoud Omid

Abstract Green supplier selection (GSS) criteria arise from an organization

inclination to respond to any existing trends in environmental issues related to
business management and processes, so GSS is integrating environmental thinking
into conventional supplier selection. This research is designed to determine pre-
valent general and environmental supplier selection criteria and develop a
framework which can help decision makers to determine and prioritize suitable
green supplier selection criteria (general and environmental). In this research we
considered several parameters (evaluation objectives) to establish suitable criteria
for GSS such as their production type, requirements, policy and objectives instead
of applying common criteria. At first a comprehensive and deep review on pre-
valent and green supplier selection literatures performed. Then several evaluation
objectives defined to assess the green supplier selection criteria include: frequency,
compatibility, quantifiable, easy to understand and assessment. By developed
framework suitable criteria can be selected using multi attribute decision making
methods. The main contribution of this research is developing a framework to help
managers for creating their green supplier criteria list.


Keywords Green supplier selection criteria General and environmental criteria 

Evaluation objectives Framework

I. E. Nielsen (&)
Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Aalborg University,
Aalborg, Denmark
e-mail: izabela@m-tech.aau.dk
N. Banaeian  H. Mobli  M. Omid
Department of Agricultural Machinery, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
P. Golińska
Department of Production Management and Logistics, Poznań University of Technology,
Poznań, Poland

P. Golinska (ed.), Logistics Operations, Supply Chain Management 79

and Sustainability, EcoProduction, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-07287-6_6,
 Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014