Sustainable production and consumption: analysing barriers and solutions for maintaining green tomorrow by using fuzzy-AHP–fuzzy-TOPSIS hybrid framework

Abstract

Conventional production and consumption system results in rapid depletion of natural resources. Particularly in developing economies, the key factor behind environmental damage is conventional production and consumption. This problem can be overcome by adopting sustainable production and consumption (SPC) initiatives. But for implementation of SPC, proper knowledge of various challenges and solutions is required as in case of any failure it may lead to heavy losses. So in this research study, efforts have been put to identify various barriers in adopting SPC and various solutions to make these barriers less intense. Keeping Indian manufacturing industry in focus, total twenty-six barriers under six different heads were identified with the help of the literature and experts’ input. Fuzzy-AHP MCDM methodology has been adopted to identify the relative importance of all these barriers. As a result, it is found that Government-related barriers, Management-related barriers and Finance-related barriers are the key barriers to be focused for adopting the SPC. Further thirteen solutions either to remove the barriers or to lower the impacts of barriers were identified from the literature and experts’ input. These thirteen solutions were ranked using fuzzy-TOPSIS methodology. The final results provided the prioritised list of all twenty-six barriers and thirteen solutions, which will be helpful in understanding the concept of SPC. Further sensitivity analysis has also been done to ensure the correctness of the results obtained. The literature is full of researches focused on identification and analysis of barriers, but very few studies like ours are available, which also analyse various solutions along with barriers. This work will be helpful for government and management in making policies to promote SPC. Finally, this work will be very beneficial for all, who are focused towards SPC.