Interesting Reads

 

The State of Supply Chain Sustainability 2020 

MIT Center of Transportation and Logistics partnered with CSCMP’s Sustainability Committee to conduct this inaugural study of sustainability in supply chain, now available to the public. Click the link to download your free copy.

Carbon Footprint of Retail: ECommerce vs Brick & Mortar

This excellent report from Generation Investment Management (March 2020) compares the GHG footprint from shopping online vs. physical stores. The punch line concludes that online is 17% more sustainable, with customer transport the biggest offender, closely followed by the physical retail store. (I argued with myself about the store - isn’t it an equal offender regardless of how we choose to shop - unless it goes away? I understand the logic but struggle with the practical comparison.) Anyway I love many of their insights, particularly (paraphrased):

  • Retailers need to enable sustainable consumer shopping patterns.

  • We need to disclose emissions data in the logistics chain.

Great read. You’ll also discover that US consumers purchase 17 billion units of clothing per year. And we throw away 14 million tons. Yikes.

Environmental Analysis of US Online Shopping This well-regarded thesis paper produced by MIT Center of Transportation & Logistics (I believe around 2013) compares the environmental impact of store vs on-line shopping behaviors, concluding that on-line shopping is often more sustainable than traditional shopping, primarily due to the consumer’s drive to store. Although it also says that under certain conditions, the answer changes - traditional is sometimes more sustainable than online (due to things like urban density or use of mass transit).

The big environmental factors tend to be consumers driving to the store (for traditional shopping) vs. packages (for online).

This and other studies suggest that optimized delivery routing is more efficient than consumers driving to stores. The relatively small impact of long-distance parcel transportation surprised me.

Interestingly it also shows that selected variations of online customer pickup are much more sustainable, with potentially much less impact than home delivery. This is meaningful, and seems to suggest that convenient pick-up strategies should be part of a better solution. Such strategies offer a compelling win/win/win model:

  • Shoppers gain the convenience of online selection, slightly burdened by a drive by pick-up option,

  • Retailers eliminate the high cost and complexity of last mile delivery, and also potentially see more revenue from more store visits,

  • The climate is the big winner because of lower emissions impact.

Further examination of the customer pick-up option seems more relevant today than when this study was released. Eight years ago retailers were simply trying to figure out how to execute omni-channel. Today the industry is much further along, with leaders more focused on trying to optimize and profit from the channel. I’d love to see more work on this.

Walmart White Paper: The Emissions Implications of Modern Retailing: Omnichannel vs. Stores and On-Line Pure Plays (April 2017)

WalMart, with assistance from Bain & Company, reported findings in this white paper to provide a better understanding of the emissions impact of modern retail practices, including various consumer shopping practices. Super insights on shopping behaviors and their impact on emissions…example: one-off trips to the store for toothpaste, or a six-pack, are sustainability killers! If you care about the planet, plan your shopping.

The Green Freight Handbook

My friend Jason Mathers at EDF authored a wonderful how-to guide about developing more sustainable and cost-efficient transportation strategies. Published in 2013, much of this information remains a classic and a must-have for any transportation department.

Why Don’t We Recycle More Bottles? 

This is a little bit out of my current study, but fascinating. I can remember as a boy, almost all bottles were recycled. We could return them to the store for money (to afford another pack of baseball cards). Not anymore…even though recycling has become commonplace.

Did you know that in the US today we only recycle 33% of glass, vs. 90% in Europe? Yet the benefits of recycled glass are strong: it cuts glass manufacturing energy costs by 30%, reduces plant emissions, and increases the quality of newly produced glass.

Here’s a great, short read on US issues with glass recycling from Chemical & Engineering News. It seems that our push to recycle everything (creating what’s called “single-stream recycling”) makes it more difficult to sort out the bottles. So most of our glass goes to the dump.

Maybe we just haven’t put all the pieces together yet. I wonder if our local composting service would care to pick up a separate container filled with our empty bottles too? Back to “dual-stream recycling” like the old days? This would be a nice local project…