When supply chain sustainability emerged two decades ago, cargo interests and transportation providers widely viewed it as a cost center and drag on the bottom line. Not at Intel, where green logistics aligned nicely with positive return on investment, proving the adage that preparation is half the battle.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based semiconductor maker, No. 51 on the 2012 Fortune 500 list, has a highly complex supply chain, with 11 fabrication facilities and five assembly/test factories spread among seven countries, and approximately 30 global warehouses. Intel’s core businesses are manufacturing and operations, but to keep up with market demand, it has become a supply chain leader, ranking seventh on the Gartner Supply Chain Top 25.

The company’s supply chain optimization efforts dovetailed nicely with sustainability that, for Intel, centers on creating products that consume less energy, take less water to build and use fewer environmentally unfriendly materials such as lead and halogens. Each element has a significant supply chain component, said Judi Barker, safety, risk and controls manager for Intel’s Customer Planning and Logistics Group.

Intel takes an enterprise-wide approach to meeting cost and sustainability goals, redesigning processes that touch on planning, forecasting, production, fulfillment and warehouse logistics. For example, there’s been a fundamental shift away from just-in-time manufacturing, in part to switch more goods from air cargo to ocean freight to reduce costs and carbon output. The company now ships some “Cadillac” products such as semiconductors by air, while shipping the fans that cool the chips by ocean.

The question of sustainability versus the bottom line is becoming moot as the cost of noncompliance with environmental mandates is prohibitively high. “The business case is strong and growing; suppliers that do not measure, quantify and manage their greenhouse-gas emissions will soon see their business will move to competitors that can provide better information and clearer evidence of change,” the Carbon Disclosure Project Supply Chain Report 2012 concluded.

At Intel and across the business world, sustainability is a component of broader social responsibility initiatives that include corporate governance and employee engagement. Sustainability is here to stay, with 23 percent of global CO2 emissions, according to the International Energy Agency.