MIT Sustainable Supply Chain Lab
What are Sustainable Supply Chains?
Supply chains are a powerful mechanism for connecting people and products, providing a ready venue for industry and stakeholders to collaboratively advance the Sustainable Development Goals. As consumers, governments, and investors become increasingly conscious of environmental and social issues, many companies seek to address their concerns by reconsidering their supply chains. But identifying, and more importantly, finding appropriate solutions for better and more sustainable systems proves challenging to most corporations that need to carefully balance competing business objectives and priorities.
The challenge
After the COVID-19 pandemic, and even before, the increase in logistics intensity due to e-commerce is pushing companies to offer faster and more frequent deliveries, which increases fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. Currently, transportation is the industry that contributes the most to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States.
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Contribution of Transportation to the total emissions of GHG in the US
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Contribution of Transportation to the total emissions of GHG globally
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Online shopping share in the total retail trade
Our mission
The MIT Sustainable Supply Chain Lab aims to support organizations to improve logistics and supply chain operations by creating applied and innovative research aimed at fostering growth while considering environmental and social sustainability. We connect research outcomes to practical settings, enabling companies and stakeholders to leverage supply chains as a beneficial force to reach global sustainable development goals. We also seek to improve the visibility of supply chain impacts and develop strategies to help reduce them, so companies can better address consumer, political, and shareholder concerns.
Current Research Initiatives
Sustainable Supply Chain engages in research with industry-leading companies, institutions and fellow academics.
Electrification of the Supply Chain
Consumer-faced logistics sustainability
Carbon Footprint
Sustainable Transportation
Circular Supply Chains
State of Supply Chain Sustainability
Sustainable Supply Chain Management Online Course
Transform your organization’s climate pledges into actionable strategies through better supply chain management. Modeled on our for-credit MIT course, SCM.290x provides the foundation for you to meet stakeholders’ demands for supply chain sustainability.
Stay connected to learn more about the next run of the course SCM.290x.
Our Research Partners
More Sustainable Research at MIT CTL
The MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics has several Sustainable initiatives that aim to connect research outcomes to practical settings, enabling companies and stakeholders to leverage supply chains as a beneficial force to reaching sustainable development goals.
Humanitarian Supply Chain Lab
MegaCity Logistics Lab
Sustainable Supply Chain Updates
New in Nature Sustainability: Carbon offsets for freight transport decarbonization
How can carbon offsets be leveraged to decarbonize freight transport?
State of Supply Chain Sustainability
The MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics (MIT CTL) and the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals have teamed up to launch the annual State of Sustainable Supply Chains Report that will answer these questions — and help companies gain a better understanding of the importance of supply chain sustainability to their enterprises, industries, and the planet.
How sustainable is the fashion industry?
Josué Velázquez Martínez, Director of Sustainable Logistics Initiative at MIT CTL recently spoke with Elizabeth Cline to discuss the environmental impacts when it comes to fashion and the rental fashion industry. The article looks at the different areas within the...
Upcoming Roundtable: Towards Circularity in Supply Chains
Recycling systems around the world have been thrown into chaos following China’s 2018 ban on the import of plastic waste. However, what has arguably created a global waste crisis can also be seen as an opportunity to re-invent inefficient or ineffective systems that...
How much CO2 is actually in your products?
At this point, you might think that your job of reducing the carbon footprint of your car is pretty much complete. But have you ever thought about the CO2 that was emitted in the production of the car? How far were the materials and components transported? Was the...
How to Make CO2 a KPI for Freight
How to Make CO2 a KPI for Freight Transportation Driven by increasing volumes of goods moving through supply chains across the globe, demand for freight transportation is expected to triple over the next few years. If we continue shipping goods as we do today, freight...
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