A Green Virtual Enterprise (GVE) is an emerging sustainable manufacturing and logistics networked enterprise model focused on offering, delivering and recovering green products to/from the market, under a lifecycle thinking and supported by its source network. In this paper, a GVE Breeding Environment Reference Framework is proposed as a common architectural framework offering a clear approach for conceiving sustainable and fully flexible forward and reverse supply networks, within a breeding environment context, based on a set of five building blocks: targets, main actors, operating principles, lifecycle and supporting technologies, to create and manage GVEs.