Green manufacturing (GM): past, present and future (a state of art review)

Green manufacturing (GM) is fast emerging as the sustainable manufacturing solution that has the potential to solve most problems that the world faces today. GM covers the entire product life cycle from conceptual design to disposal in a benign, harmless manner causing no or minimal adverse impact on environment by optimum use of resources and reduction of waste and pollution. 4Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle, remanufacture) is slowly being accepted and adopted as the model of growth and sustainability the world over. There is a very large volume of literature available on GM dealing with several aspects. This paper is an attempt to comprehensively and systematically review the same and put it in a format which can be easily comprehended and applied. This is an effort of analysing around 123 papers from around 73 leading journals spread over last 15 years. This entire database is critically reviewed and properly classified by the authors. The analysis further revel several emerging issues and challenges which need to be addressed. The key challenge identified is the absence of unified comprehensive GM framework. The authors have finally suggested one such universal GM framework.