There has been an increasing emphasis on environment management due to generation of toxic waste, scarcity of natural resources, etc. This has pushed manufacturing organizations to implement closed loop supply chain practices. In this paper, critical factors for the implementation of closed loop supply chain practices are identified and analyzed in the Indian automotive sector. Various key factors were identified from extant literature and subsequently validated from 28 industry experts. Further, cause and effect relationships among the factors are examined by applying Grey-Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory technique. The results indicate that ‘Governmental regulations and support’ (ReC ¼ 1.14), ‘Increased customer awareness on environment protection’ (ReC ¼ 0.65) and ‘Implementation of information technologies’ (ReC ¼ 0.34) are the most important causal factors. The paper provides recommendations for policy makers, managers and practitioners on implementation of closed loop supply chain practices for environmental management. The future studies can explore the critical factors in other manufacturing industries such as electronics firms.