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    Sustainable supply chains put the customer first

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    When we consider the supply chain, we typically think of factories, ships, trucks, and warehouses. Yet, the customer side is equally important, especially in efforts to make our distribution networks more sustainable. Customers are an untapped resource in building sustainability, says Josué C. Velázquez Martínez, a research scientist at MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. 

    Velázquez Martínez, who is director of MIT’s Sustainable Supply Chain Lab, investigates how customer-facing supply chains can be made more environmentally and socially sustainable. One way is a Green Button project that explores how to optimize e-commerce delivery schedules to reduce carbon emissions and persuade customers to use less carbon-intensive four- or five-day shipping options instead of one or two days. Velázquez Martínez has also launched the MIT Low Income Firms Transformation (LIFT) Lab that is researching ways to improve micro-retailer supply chains in the developing world to provide owners with the necessary tools for survival.  

    “The definition of sustainable supply chain keeps evolving because things that were sustainable 20 to 30 years ago are not as sustainable now,” says Velázquez Martínez. “Today, there are more companies that are capturing information to build strategies for environmental, economic, and social sustainability. They are investing in alternative energy and other solutions to make the supply chain more environmentally friendly and are tracking their suppliers and identifying key vulnerabilities. A big part of this is an attempt to create fairer conditions for people who work in supply chains or are dependent on them.”

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    The move toward sustainable supply chain is being driven as much by people as by companies, whether they are playing the role of selective consumer or voting citizens. The consumer aspect is often overlooked, says Velázquez Martínez. “Consumers are the ones who move the supply chain. We are looking at how companies can provide transparency to involve customers in their sustainability strategy.” 

    Proposed solutions for sustainability are not always as effective as promised. Some fashion rental schemes fall into this category, says Velázquez Martínez. “There are many new rental companies that are trying to get more use out of clothes to offset the emissions associated with production. We recently researched the environmental impact of monthly subscription models where consumers pay a fee to receive clothes for a month before returning them, as well as peer-to-peer sharing models.” 

    The researchers found that while rental services generally have a lower carbon footprint than retail sales, hidden emissions from logistics played a surprisingly large role. “First, you need to deliver the clothes and pick them up, and there are high return rates,” says Velázquez Martínez. “When you factor in dry cleaning and packaging emissions, the rental models in some cases have a worse carbon footprint than buying new clothes.” Peer-to-peer sharing could be better, he adds, but that depends on how far the consumers travel to meet-up points. 

    Typically, says Velázquez Martínez, garment types that are frequently used are not well suited to rental models. “But for specialty clothes such as wedding dresses or prom dresses, it is better to rent.” 

    Waiting a few days to save the planet 

    Even before the pandemic, online retailing gained a second wind due to low-cost same- and next-day delivery options. While e-commerce may have its drawbacks as a contributor to social isolation and reduced competition, it has proven itself to be far more eco-friendly than brick-and-mortar shopping, not to mention a lot more convenient. Yet rapid deliveries are cutting into online-shopping’s carbon-cutting advantage.

    In 2019, MIT’s Sustainable Supply Chain Lab launched a Green Bottle project to study the rapid delivery phenomenon. The project has been “testing whether consumers would be willing to delay their e-commerce deliveries to reduce the environmental impact of fast shipping,” says Velázquez Martínez. “Many companies such as Walmart and Target have followed Amazon’s 2019 strategy of moving from two-day to same-day delivery. Instead of sending a fully loaded truck to a neighborhood every few days, they now send multiple trucks to that neighborhood every day, and there are more days when trucks are targeting each neighborhood. All this increases carbon emissions and makes it hard for shippers to consolidate. ”  

    Working with Coppel, one of Mexico’s largest retailers, the Green Button project inspired a related Consolidation Ecommerce Project that built a large-scale mathematical model to provide a strategy for consolidation. The model determined what delivery time window each neighborhood demands and then calculated the best day to deliver to each neighborhood to meet the desired window while minimizing carbon emissions. 

    No matter what mixture of delivery times was used, the consolidation model helped retailers schedule deliveries more efficiently. Yet, the biggest cuts in emissions emerged when customers were willing to wait several days.

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    “When we ran a month-long simulation comparing our model for four-to-five-day delivery with Coppel’s existing model for one- or two-day delivery, we saw savings in fuel consumption of over 50 percent on certain routes” says Velázquez Martínez. “This is huge compared to other strategies for squeezing more efficiency from the last-mile supply chain, such as routing optimization, where savings are close to 5 percent. The optimal solution depends on factors such as the capacity for consolidation, the frequency of delivery, the store capacity, and the impact on inbound operations.” 

    The researchers next set out to determine if customers could be persuaded to wait longer for deliveries. Considering that the price differential is low or nonexistent, this was a considerable challenge. Yet, the same day habit is only a few years old, and some consumers have come to realize they don’t always need rapid deliveries. “Some consumers who order by rapid delivery find they are too busy to open the packages right away,” says Velázquez Martínez.  

    Trees beat kilograms of CO2

    The researchers set out to find if consumers would be willing to sacrifice a bit of convenience if they knew they were helping to reduce climate change. The Green Button project tested different public outreach strategies. For one test group, they reported the carbon impact of delivery times in kilograms of carbon dioxide (CO2). Another group received the information expressed in terms of the energy required to recycle a certain amount of garbage. A third group learned about emissions in terms of the number of trees required to trap the carbon. “Explaining the impact in terms of trees led to almost 90 percent willing to wait another day or two,” says Velázquez Martínez. “This is compared to less than 40 percent for the group that received the data in kilograms of CO2.” 

    Another surprise was that there was no difference in response based on income, gender, or age. “Most studies of green consumers suggest they are predominantly high income, female, highly educated, or younger,” says Velázquez Martínez. “However, our results show that the differences were the same between low and high income, women and men, and younger and older people. We have shown that disclosing emissions transparently and making the consumer a part of the strategy can be a new opportunity for more consumer-driven logistics sustainability.” 

    The researchers are now developing similar models for business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce. “We found that B2B supply chain emissions are often high because many shipping companies require strict delivery windows,” says Velázquez Martínez.  

    The B2B models drill down to examine the Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) emissions of suppliers. “Although some shipping companies are now asking their suppliers to review emissions, it is a challenge to create a transparent supply chain,” says Velázquez Martínez.  “Technological innovations have made it easier, starting with RFID [radio frequency identification], and then real-time GPS mapping and blockchain. But these technologies need to be more accessible and affordable, and we need more companies willing to use them.” 

    Some companies have been hesitant to dig too deeply into their supply chain, fearing they might uncover a scandal that might risk their reputation, says Velázquez Martínez. Other organizations are forced to look at the issue when nongovernmental organizations research sustainability issues such as social injustice in sweat shops and conflict mineral mines. 

    One challenge to building a transparent supply chain is that “in many companies, the sustainability teams are separate from the rest of the company,” says Velázquez Martínez. “Even if the CEOs receive information on sustainability issues, it often doesn’t filter down because the information does not belong to the planners or managers. We are pushing companies to not only account for sustainability factors in supply chain network design but also examine daily operations that affect sustainability. This is a big topic now: How can we translate sustainability information into something that everybody can understand and use?” 

    LIFT Lab lifts micro-retailers  

    In 2016, Velázquez Martínez launched the MIT GeneSys project to gain insights into micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in developing countries. The project released a GeneSys mobile app, which was used by more than 500 students throughout Latin America to collect data on more than 800 microfirms. In 2022, he launched the LIFT Lab, which focuses more specifically on studying and improving the supply chain for MSEs.  

    Worldwide, some 90 percent of companies have fewer than 10 employees. In Latin America and the Caribbean, companies with fewer than 50 employees represent 99 percent of all companies and 47 percent of employment. 

    Although MSEs represent much of the world’s economy, they are poorly understood, notes Velázquez Martínez. “Those tiny businesses are driving a lot of the economy and serve as important customers for the large companies working in developing countries. They range from small businesses down to people trying to get some money to eat by selling cakes or tacos through their windows.”  

    The MIT LIFT Lab researchers investigated whether MSE supply chain issues could help shed light on why many Latin American countries have been limited to marginal increases in gross domestic product. “Large companies from the developed world that are operating in Latin America, such as Unilever, Walmart, and Coca-Cola, have huge growth there, in some cases higher than they have in the developed world,” says Velázquez Martínez. “Yet, the countries are not developing as fast as we would expect.” 

    The LIFT Lab data showed that while the multinationals are thriving in Latin America, the local MSEs are decreasing in productivity. The study also found the trend has worsened with Covid-19.  

    The LIFT Lab’s first big project, which is sponsored by Mexican beverage and retail company FEMSA, is studying supply chains in Mexico. The study spans 200,000 micro-retailers and 300,000 consumers. In a collaboration with Tecnológico de Monterrey, hundreds of students are helping with a field study.  

    “We are looking at supply chain management and business capabilities and identifying the challenges to adoption of technology and digitalization,” says Velázquez Martínez. “We want to find the best ways for micro-firms to work with suppliers and consumers by identifying the consumers who access this market, as well as the products and services that can best help the micro-firms drive growth.” 

    Based on the earlier research by GeneSys, Velázquez Martínez has developed some hypotheses for potential improvements for micro-retailer supply chain, starting with payment terms. “We found that the micro-firms often get the worst purchasing deals. Owners without credit cards and with limited cash often buy in smaller amounts at much higher prices than retailers like Walmart. The big suppliers are squeezing them.” 

    While large retailers usually get 60 to 120 days to pay, micro-retailers “either pay at the moment of the transaction or in advance,” says Velázquez Martínez. “In a study of 500 micro-retailers in five countries in Latin America, we found the average payment time was minus seven days payment in advance. These terms reduce cash availability and often lead to bankruptcy.” 

    LIFT Lab is working with suppliers to persuade them to offer a minimum payment time of two weeks. “We can show the suppliers that the change in terms will let them move more product and increase sales,” says Velázquez Martínez. “Meanwhile, the micro-retailers gain higher profits and become more stable, even if they may pay a bit more.” 

    LIFT Lab is also looking at ways that micro-retailers can leverage smartphones for digitalization and planning. “Some of these companies are keeping records on napkins,” says Velázquez Martínez. “By using a cellphone, they can charge orders to suppliers and communicate with consumers. We are testing different dashboards for mobile apps to help with planning and financial performance. We are also recommending services the stores can provide, such as paying electricity or water bills. The idea is to build more capabilities and knowledge and increase business competencies for the supply chain that are tailored for micro-retailers.” 

    From a financial perspective, micro-retailers are not always the most efficient way to move products. Yet they also play an important role in building social cohesion within neighborhoods. By offering more services, the corner bodega can bring people together in ways that are impossible with e-commerce and big-box stores.  

    Whether the consumers are micro-firms buying from suppliers or e-commerce customers waiting for packages, “transparency is key to building a sustainable supply chain,” says Velázquez Martínez. “To change consumer habits, consumers need to be better educated on the impacts of their behaviors. With consumer-facing logistics, ‘The last shall be first, and the first last.’” More

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      Food for thought, thought for food

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      According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, approximately 3.1 billion people worldwide were unable to afford a healthy diet in 2020. Meanwhile, in 2021 close to 2.3 billion people were moderately or severely food insecure. Given the strong link between malnutrition and income disparity, the numbers paint a grim picture representing one of the grand challenges of our time.

      “I’m probably an idealist,” says MIT Research Scientist Christopher Mejía Argueta, “but I really believe that if we change our diets and think about ways to help others, we can make a difference — that’s my motivation.”

      Mejía Argueta is the founder and director of the MIT Food and Retail Operations Lab (FaROL). He has more than a decade of experience in supply chain management, optimization, and effective data-driven decision-making on pressing issues like the evolution of end consumers for retail and e-tail supply chains, food waste, and equitable access to nutrition.  

      Supply chain network designs typically focus on minimizing costs without considering the implications (e.g., cost) of changes in consumer behavior. Mejía Argueta and his colleagues at the FaROL, however, are working to understand and design optimal supply chains to create high-performance operations based on consumer choice. “Understanding the significant factors of consumer choice and analyzing their evolution over time becomes critical to designing forward-looking retail operations with data-driven and customer-centric supply chains, inventory management, and distribution systems,” explains Mejía Argueta. 

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      One of his recent projects examined the challenges of small retailers worldwide. These mom-and-pop outlets, or nanostores, account for 50 percent of the global market share and are the primary source of consumer packaged goods for people in urban areas. Worldwide there are nearly 50 million nanostores, each serving between 100-200 households in a community. In India alone, there are 14 million nanostores known as kiranas. And while these retailers are more prevalent in emerging markets, they play an important role in developed markets, particularly in under-resourced communities, and are frequently located in “food deserts,” where they are the only source of essential goods for the community.  

      These small retailers thrive thanks, partly, to their ability to offer the right combination of affordability and convenience while fostering trust with local customers, who often lack access to a supermarket or a grocery store. They often exist in fragmented, densely populated areas where infrastructure and public transportation services are poor and consumers have limited purchasing power. But nanostore shopkeepers and owners are intimately familiar with their customers and their consumption patterns, which means they can connect those consumption patterns or information to the larger supply chain. According to Mejía Argueta, when it comes to the future of retail, nanostores will be the cornerstones of growth in emerging economies. 

      But it’s a complicated scenario. Mom-and-pop shops don’t have the capacity to offer a broad range of products to their customers, and often, they lack access to nutritious food options. Logistically speaking, it is expensive to supply them, and the cost-to-serve (i.e., the logistics cost) is between 10 to 30 percent more expensive than other retailers. According to Mejía Argueta, this has a significant ripple effect, impacting education, productivity, and, eventually, the economic performance of an entire nation.  

      “The high fragmentation of nanostores causes substantial distribution inefficiencies, especially in congested megacities,” he says. “At my lab, we study how to make nanostores more efficient and effective by considering various commercial and logistics strategies while considering inherent technical challenges. We need to serve these small retailers better to help them survive and thrive, to provide a greater impact for underserved communities and the entire economic ecosystem.”

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      Mejía Argueta and his team recently collaborated with Tufts University and the City of Somerville, Massachusetts, to conduct research on food access models in underserved communities. The Somerville Project explored various interventions to supply fresh produce in food desert neighborhoods.

      “A lack of nutrition does not simply mean a lack of food,” Mejía Argueta says. “It can also be caused by an overabundance of unhealthy foods in a given market, which is particularly troublesome for U.S. cities where people in underserved communities don’t have access to healthy food options. We believe that one way to combat the problem of food deserts is to supply these areas with healthy food options affordably and create awareness programs.”  

      The collaborative project saw Mejía Argueta and his colleagues assessing the impact of several intervention schemes designed to empower the end consumer. For example, they implemented a low-cost grocery delivery model similar to Instacart as well as a ride sharing system to transport people from their homes to grocery stores and back. They also collaborated with a nonprofit organization, Partnership for a Healthier America, and began working with retailers to deliver “veggie boxes” in underserved communities. Models like these provide low-income people access to food while providing dignity of choice, Mejía Argueta explains.  

      When it comes to supply chain management research, sustainability and societal impact often fall by the wayside, but Mejía Argueta’s bottom-up approach shirks tradition. “We’re trying to build a community, employing a socially driven perspective because if you work with the community, you gain their trust. If you want to make something sustainable in the long term, people need to trust in these solutions and engage with the ecosystem as a whole.”  

      And to achieve real-world impact, collaboration is key. Mejía Argueta says that government has an important role to play, developing policy to connect the models he and his colleagues develop in academia to societal challenges. Meanwhile, he believes startups and entrepreneurs can function as bridge-builders to link the flows of information, the flows of goods and cash, and even knowledge and security in an ecosystem that suffers from fragmentation and siloed thinking among stakeholders.

      Finally, Mejía Argueta reflects on the role of corporations and his belief that the MIT Industrial Liaison Program is essential to getting his research to the frontline of business challenges. “The Industrial Liaison Program does a fantastic job of connecting our research to real-world scenarios,” he says. “It creates opportunities for us to have meaningful interactions with corporates for real-world impact. I believe strongly in the MIT motto ‘mens et manus,’ and ILP helps drive our research into practice.” More

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      MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium announces recipients of inaugural MCSC Seed Awards

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      The MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium (MCSC) has awarded 20 projects a total of $5 million over two years in its first-ever 2022 MCSC Seed Awards program. The winning projects are led by principal investigators across all five of MIT’s schools.

      The goal of the MCSC Seed Awards is to engage MIT researchers and link the economy-wide work of the consortium to ongoing and emerging climate and sustainability efforts across campus. The program offers further opportunity to build networks among the awarded projects to deepen the impact of each and ensure the total is greater than the sum of its parts.

      For example, to drive progress under the awards category Circularity and Materials, the MCSC can facilitate connections between the technologists at MIT who are developing recovery approaches for metals, plastics, and fiber; the urban planners who are uncovering barriers to reuse; and the engineers, who will look for efficiency opportunities in reverse supply chains.

      “The MCSC Seed Awards are designed to complement actions previously outlined in Fast Forward: MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade and, more specifically, the Climate Grand Challenges,” says Anantha P. Chandrakasan, dean of the MIT School of Engineering, Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and chair of the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium. “In collaboration with seed award recipients and MCSC industry members, we are eager to engage in interdisciplinary exploration and propel urgent advancements in climate and sustainability.” 

      By supporting MIT researchers with expertise in economics, infrastructure, community risk assessment, mobility, and alternative fuels, the MCSC will accelerate implementation of cross-disciplinary solutions in the awards category Decarbonized and Resilient Value Chains. Enhancing Natural Carbon Sinks and building connections to local communities will require associations across experts in ecosystem change, biodiversity, improved agricultural practice and engagement with farmers, all of which the consortium can begin to foster through the seed awards.

      “Funding opportunities across campus has been a top priority since launching the MCSC,” says Jeremy Gregory, MCSC executive director. “It is our honor to support innovative teams of MIT researchers through the inaugural 2022 MCSC Seed Awards program.”

      The winning projects are tightly aligned with the MCSC’s areas of focus, which were derived from a year of highly engaged collaborations with MCSC member companies. The projects apply across the member’s climate and sustainability goals.

      The MCSC’s 16 member companies span many industries, and since early 2021, have met with members of the MIT community to define focused problem statements for industry-specific challenges, identify meaningful partnerships and collaborations, and develop clear and scalable priorities. Outcomes from these collaborations laid the foundation for the focus areas, which have shaped the work of the MCSC. Specifically, the MCSC Industry Advisory Board engaged with MIT on key strategic directions, and played a critical role in the MCSC’s series of interactive events. These included virtual workshops hosted last summer, each on a specific topic that allowed companies to work with MIT and each other to align key assumptions, identify blind spots in corporate goal-setting, and leverage synergies between members, across industries. The work continued in follow-up sessions and an annual symposium.

      “We are excited to see how the seed award efforts will help our member companies reach or even exceed their ambitious climate targets, find new cross-sector links among each other, seek opportunities to lead, and ripple key lessons within their industry, while also deepening the Institute’s strong foundation in climate and sustainability research,” says Elsa Olivetti, the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Associate Professor in Materials Science and Engineering and MCSC co-director.

      As the seed projects take shape, the MCSC will provide ongoing opportunities for awardees to engage with the Industry Advisory Board and technical teams from the MCSC member companies to learn more about the potential for linking efforts to support and accelerate their climate and sustainability goals. Awardees will also have the chance to engage with other members of the MCSC community, including its interdisciplinary Faculty Steering Committee.

      “One of our mantras in the MCSC is to ‘amplify and extend’ existing efforts across campus; we’re always looking for ways to connect the collaborative industry relationships we’re building and the work we’re doing with other efforts on campus,” notes Jeffrey Grossman, the Morton and Claire Goulder and Family Professor in Environmental Systems, head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and MCSC co-director. “We feel the urgency as well as the potential, and we don’t want to miss opportunities to do more and go faster.”

      The MCSC Seed Awards complement the Climate Grand Challenges, a new initiative to mobilize the entire MIT research community around developing the bold, interdisciplinary solutions needed to address difficult, unsolved climate problems. The 27 finalist teams addressed four broad research themes, which align with the MCSC’s focus areas. From these finalist teams, five flagship projects were announced in April 2022.

      The parallels between MCSC’s focus areas and the Climate Grand Challenges themes underscore an important connection between the shared long-term research interests of industry and academia. The challenges that some of the world’s largest and most influential companies have identified are complementary to MIT’s ongoing research and innovation — highlighting the tremendous opportunity to develop breakthroughs and scalable solutions quickly and effectively. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry underscored the importance of developing these scalable solutions, including critical new technology, during a conversation with MIT President L. Rafael Reif at MIT’s first Climate Grand Challenges showcase event last month.

      Both the MCSC Seed Awards and the Climate Grand Challenges are part of MIT’s larger commitment and initiative to combat climate change; this was underscored in “Fast Forward: MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade,” which the Institute published in May 2021.

      The project titles and research leads for each of the 20 awardees listed below are categorized by MCSC focus area.

      Decarbonized and resilient value chains

      “Collaborative community mapping toolkit for resilience planning,” led by Miho Mazereeuw, associate professor of architecture and urbanism in the Department of Architecture and director of the Urban Risk Lab (a research lead on Climate Grand Challenges flagship project) and Nicholas de Monchaux, professor and department head in the Department of Architecture
      “CP4All: Fast and local climate projections with scientific machine learning — towards accessibility for all of humanity,” led by Chris Hill, principal research scientist in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and Dava Newman, director of the MIT Media Lab and the Apollo Program Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
      “Emissions reductions and productivity in U.S. manufacturing,” led by Mert Demirer, assistant professor of applied economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Jing Li, assistant professor and William Barton Rogers Career Development Chair of Energy Economics in the MIT Sloan School of Management
      “Logistics electrification through scalable and inter-operable charging infrastructure: operations, planning, and policy,” led by Alex Jacquillat, the 1942 Career Development Professor and assistant professor of operations research and statistics in the MIT Sloan School of Management
      “Powertrain and system design for LOHC-powered long-haul trucking,” led by William Green, the Hoyt Hottel Professor in Chemical Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering and postdoctoral officer, and Wai K. Cheng, professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and director of the Sloan Automotive Laboratory
      “Sustainable Separation and Purification of Biochemicals and Biofuels using Membranes,” led by John Lienhard, the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Water in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab, and director of the Rohsenow Kendall Heat Transfer Laboratory; and Nicolas Hadjiconstantinou, professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, co-director of the Center for Computational Science and Engineering, associate director of the Center for Exascale Simulation of Materials in Extreme Environments, and graduate officer
      “Toolkit for assessing the vulnerability of industry infrastructure siting to climate change,” led by Michael Howland, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

      Circularity and Materials

      “Colorimetric Sulfidation for Aluminum Recycling,” led by Antoine Allanore, associate professor of metallurgy in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering
      “Double Loop Circularity in Materials Design Demonstrated on Polyurethanes,” led by Brad Olsen, the Alexander and I. Michael Kasser (1960) Professor and graduate admissions co-chair in the Department of Chemical Engineering, and Kristala Prather, the Arthur Dehon Little Professor and department executive officer in the Department of Chemical Engineering
      “Engineering of a microbial consortium to degrade and valorize plastic waste,” led by Otto Cordero, associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Desiree Plata, the Gilbert W. Winslow (1937) Career Development Professor in Civil Engineering and associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
      “Fruit-peel-inspired, biodegradable packaging platform with multifunctional barrier properties,” led by Kripa Varanasi, professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering
      “High Throughput Screening of Sustainable Polyesters for Fibers,” led by Gregory Rutledge, the Lammot du Pont Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, and Brad Olsen, Alexander and I. Michael Kasser (1960) Professor and graduate admissions co-chair in the Department of Chemical Engineering
      “Short-term and long-term efficiency gains in reverse supply chains,” led by Yossi Sheffi, the Elisha Gray II Professor of Engineering Systems, professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and director of the Center for Transportation and Logistics
      The costs and benefits of circularity in building construction, led by Siqi Zheng, the STL Champion Professor of Urban and Real Estate Sustainability at the MIT Center for Real Estate and Department of Urban Studies and Planning, faculty director of the MIT Center for Real Estate, and faculty director for the MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab; and Randolph Kirchain, principal research scientist and co-director of MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub

      Natural carbon sinks

      “Carbon sequestration through sustainable practices by smallholder farmers,” led by Joann de Zegher, the Maurice F. Strong Career Development Professor and assistant professor of operations management in the MIT Sloan School of Management, and Karen Zheng the George M. Bunker Professor and associate professor of operations management in the MIT Sloan School of Management
      “Coatings to protect and enhance diverse microbes for improved soil health and crop yields,” led by Ariel Furst, the Raymond A. (1921) And Helen E. St. Laurent Career Development Professor of Chemical Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering, and Mary Gehring, associate professor of biology in the Department of Biology, core member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, and graduate officer
      “ECO-LENS: Mainstreaming biodiversity data through AI,” led by John Fernández, professor of building technology in the Department of Architecture and director of MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative
      “Growing season length, productivity, and carbon balance of global ecosystems under climate change,” led by Charles Harvey, professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and César Terrer, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

      Social dimensions and adaptation

      “Anthro-engineering decarbonization at the million-person scale,” led by Manduhai Buyandelger, professor in the Anthropology Section, and Michael Short, the Class of ’42 Associate Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering
      “Sustainable solutions for climate change adaptation: weaving traditional ecological knowledge and STEAM,” led by Janelle Knox-Hayes, the Lister Brothers Associate Professor of Economic Geography and Planning and head of the Environmental Policy and Planning Group in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, and Miho Mazereeuw, associate professor of architecture and urbanism in the Department of Architecture and director of the Urban Risk Lab (a research lead on a Climate Grand Challenges flagship project) More

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      Push to make supply chains more sustainable continues to gain momentum

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      Much of the effort to make businesses sustainable centers on their supply chains, which were severely disrupted during the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet, according to new research from the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL), supply chain sustainability (SCS) investments hardly slowed, even as the pandemic raged.

      The finding, contained in the 2021 State of Supply Chain Sustainability report, puts companies on notice that they ignore the sustainability of their supply chains at their peril. This is particularly the case for enterprises with a low or moderate commitment to SCS, such as organizations classed as “Low Effort” and “Dreamer” in the new SCS Firm Typology that appears in the report for the first time. 

      The research also highlights the increasing pressure companies are under to devote resources to SCS. This pressure came from various stakeholders last year and suggests that sustainability in supply chains is a business trend, and not a fad.

      CTL publishes the 2021 State of Supply Chain Sustainability report in collaboration with the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP), a leading professional membership association. This year’s report is sponsored by BlueYonder, C.H. Robinson, KPMG, Intel, and Sam’s Club.

      Sustainability efforts undaunted by Covid-19

      “We believe cooperation between sectors is vital to thoroughly understand the complexity and evolution of sustainability efforts more broadly,” says David Correll, CTL research scientist. “Our work with CSCMP and our sponsors helps us to embed this essential research and its findings within the context of the real-life practice of supply chain management.”

      The research included a large-scale international survey of supply chain professionals with over 2,400 respondents — more than double the number received for the previous report. The survey was conducted in late 2020. In addition, 21 in-depth executive interviews were completed, and relevant news items, social media content, and reports were analyzed for the report.

      More than 80 percent of survey respondents claimed the pandemic had no impact or increased their firms’ commitments to SCS: Eighty-three percent of the executives interviewed said that Covid-19 had either accelerated SCS activity or, at the very least, increased awareness and brought urgency to this growing field.

      The pressure to support sustainability in supply chains came from multiple sources, both internal and external, but increased the most among investors and industry associations. Internally, company executives were standout champions of SCS.

      Although there are many approaches to investing in SCS, interest in human rights protection and worker welfare, along with energy savings and renewable energy, increased significantly last year. Supplier development was the most common mechanism used by firms to deliver on their SCS promises.

      Increasing investment, some speed bumps

      Given the momentum behind SCS, the future will likely bring more investment in this increasingly important area of supply chain management. And practitioners — who bring deep domain expertise and well-rounded views of enterprises to the table — will become more influential as sustainability advocates.

      But there are some formidable obstacles to overcome, too. For example, it is notable that most of the momentum behind SCS appeared to come from large (1,000-plus employees) and very large (10,000-plus employees) companies covered by the research. Small- to medium-sized enterprises were far less committed, and more work is needed to bring them into the fold through a better understanding of the barriers they face.

      A broader concern is that more attention from stakeholders — notably consumers, investors, and regulators — will bring more scrutiny of firms’ SCS track records, and less tolerance of token efforts to make supply chains sustainable. Improved supply chain transparency and disclosure are critical to firms’ responses, the report suggests.

      Some high-profile issues, such as combating social injustices and climate change mitigation, will continue to stoke the pressure on companies to invest in meaningful SCS initiatives. It follows that the connection between companies’ SCS performance and their profitability is likely to strengthen over the next few years.

      Will companies follow through?

      As companies grapple with these issues, they will face some difficult decisions. For example, the chief operating officer of a consumer goods company interviewed for the report described operating through pandemic constraints as a “moral calculus” where some sustainability commitments had to be temporarily sacrificed to achieve others. Such a calculus will likely challenge many companies as they juggle their responses to SCS demands. A key question is to ascertain the degree to which companies’ recent net-zero commitments will translate into effective SCS actions over the next few years.

      The CTL and CSCMP research teams are laying the groundwork for the 2022 State of Supply Chain Sustainability report. This annual status report aims to help practitioners and the industry to make more effective and informed sustainability decisions. The questionnaire for next year’s report will open in September. More