MIT Sloan Management Review

New research shows which sustainability practices have a statistically significant impact on the overall success of the sustainable value-chain — suppliers, distributors, and partners — initiatives measured, their cost savings, and their revenue impact. The leading practices that showed particular effectiveness were clustered around three areas: engagement, goals and standards, and outside expertise. Managers should focus on the practices that are proven to work, and stop wasting their efforts on reinventing the wheel.

It’s only natural that a beer company would be concerned about water. It takes five liters of water, on average, to manufacture one liter of beer. When SABMiller mapped its water footprint and found that it took 45 liters of water to produce one liter of its beer in the Czech Republic, and 155 liters in South Africa, the company changed its water practices to make its beer more sustainable. An interview with SABMiller’s senior vice president of sustainable development explains how they did it.

Designing for resilience can ensure that critical systems continue to operate despite increasing threats. The focus of any organization concerned with resilience should be on whatever assures the continuity of business operations and the systems in which they’re embedded. By defining a critical system — its components, boundaries, and functions — managers can begin to use “what-if” scenarios to determine which components, or combination of components, are most vulnerable.

At Dell, the sustainability team, working with suppliers and recyclers, has developed new compostable packaging materials made from bamboo and mushrooms. As John Pflueger, Principal Environmental Strategist, says, “It’s absolutely amazing.” Long a “pain point” for customers, the new lighter and compostable packaging is a big step forward, improving many sustainability metrics.

Jason Jay, sustainability expert at the MIT Sloan School of Management, speaks with the sustainability chiefs at Stonyfield and SAP to hear how both companies are approaching the problem of understanding product footprints. They emphasize the strong links between measuring product footprints and building a business case.

Multinational companies such as Apple need to give their Chinese suppliers better incentives to comply with local standards in environmental and health safety, say researchers from Stanford in the new issue of MIT SMR.

Multinational corporations are under growing pressure to make sure their contractors and subcontractors in China meet environmental standards. Yet traditional approaches to ensuring environmental, health and safety compliance, such as checklist audits, have proved problematic. This article recommends that organizations work closely with suppliers, providing incentives for identifying, disclosing and addressing problems and establishing collaborative relationships with NGOs and industry groups.

Trying to reduce your company's carbon footprint? MIT engineering professor David Simchi-Levi suggests taking a systematic look at the logistics involved in your supply chain -- and then carefully analyzing the data to understand the greenhouse gas emissions impact of your logistics choices, the MIT News Office reports.

Supply chain executives are uniquely positioned to be able to see the whole ecology of a firm’s business, because they’re so close to all the pieces. This is especially true when it comes to matters of sustainability. This interview with Edgar Blanco, Research Director at the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics, outlines the areas in which supply chain managers can immediately have a sustainability impact, including packaging, transportation, supplier engagement, and customer alignment.

For many businesses, the biggest problem with adopting sustainable practices is getting started. Sometimes, what a manager needs most of all to get started is to notice something he or she has missed so far.