Dr. Robert Sroufe has some thoughts on that. He is a professor of sustainability at the Falk School of Sustainability and Environment at Pittsburgh’s Chatham University, where he teaches courses on supply chain management, sustainable business practices, operations, and project management, with a focus on experiential learning. Sroufe believes that students thrive when challenged with real-world problems, so he likes to engage them in problem-based learning and research that has the potential for tangible impact.
Dr. Sroufe holds a patent for a system designed to track greenhouse gases and has also been ranked among the top 2% of scientists globally based on standardized citation metrics. Prior to joining the faculty at Chatham University, he held an endowed chair at Pittsburgh’s Duquesne University and was an assistant professor of operations management at Boston College. He holds a Ph.D. in operations from Michigan State University, where he also earned a dual MBA in materials and logistics management, and procurement.
He spoke recently with DC Velocity’s group editorial director, David Maloney, about how the withdrawal of government support will affect sustainability initiatives, the challenges of emissions reporting, and why companies should focus on their “carbon handprint” rather than their carbon footprint.
Q: It’s rather unusual for a college to have a School of Sustainability. Can you tell me a little bit about your program at Chatham University?
A: Yes, we’re the second sustainability school in the United States. I have a joint appointment with the business school and the school of sustainability. The pillars of our curriculum include sustainable community, sustainable business, and sustainable food and agricultural systems. And in that regard, we have a university campus that actually walks the talk. We have carbon neutrality goals for the campus, and we generate our own renewable energy. We have bioswales [landscaped ditches for collecting and filtering stormwater runoff], and we grow our own food on an on-campus certified organic farm. We also have microgrids, and we’re looking into changing out our fleet vehicles to all-electric.
The work I do with graduate students involves live projects with companies that are trying to tackle sustainability problems. It’s baked into my research and books on developing sustainable supply chains to drive value and [make] sustainability a part of every business function. So all these systems come together to create a more innovative business proposition for anyone willing to take on that kind of challenge.
Q: By their nature, our supply chains—and the transportation portion, in particular—have large carbon footprints. It simply takes a lot of energy to move goods around the world. Where should supply chain leaders be focusing their efforts to trim that footprint?
A: You’re exactly right about those footprints. But I’d like to suggest that companies flip their thinking in that regard. Instead of focusing on their carbon footprint, which measures an operation’s negative impact on the environment, they might do better to focus on their carbon “handprint,” which measures an operation’s positive impact.
As for why I’m suggesting we reframe the discussion, let’s take a step back. It’s hard to ask firms to be innovative when they rely on 150-year-old technology in their energy systems and transportation systems. According to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory [a federally funded research center in Livermore, California], we’re wasting just over 61% of all the energy we generate in the United States. That energy goes to buildings, and it goes to transportation. Other reports have shown that we’re wasting about 81% of every gallon of gasoline burned in an internal combustion engine vehicle. These vehicles have been around for over 100 years. Our food travels 1,500 miles, and we waste 40% of it either along the way or at the end. For me, these are very wasteful systems.
I want firms to be more innovative and not stick with old technology. We’ve been subsidizing those technologies for the last 100 years. Think about what we want to subsidize for the next 100 years and how much better those systems could be if we can be more innovative in eliminating waste. I like thinking about it in those terms.
Q: Are good business practices and sustainable business practices mutually exclusive?
A: I’d say absolutely not. For example, some of my own work on buildings found that we could create energy retrofit projects that have a return on investment of five years at the outside. If we include environmental impacts avoided, maybe that payback period comes down to three years. If we actually include human health and productivity impacts, we’re looking at payback periods of maybe four months. Good business practices and more sustainable business practices are not separate, and they do not require tradeoffs.
Q: We have a new administration in Washington that has canceled a lot of the previous administration’s environmental initiatives,including participation in the Paris Climate Accords and efforts to wean the nation off fossil fuels. Where does that leave our nation in terms of reducing the impacts of climate change?
A: Great question. In this time of uncertainty, I want people to think about what we can control and what we cannot control. So when this happened last time [during the first Trump administration], governors and mayors stepped up and still committed and pledged to be part of the Paris Accords and continued to look at their carbon reduction goals.
We actually have over 100 cities in the United States that have set goals to become carbon neutral. And if we think about it globally and how we’re connected, there are over 1,000 cities that have pledged to reach carbon neutrality. These are all part of major initiatives. Let’s get behind things that can help improve environmental impacts, improve our health and productivity, and have a good ROI [return on investment] behind them.
Q: Can real progress be made without the same level of government support?
A: I think it’s a tragic place to stop if we think it’s just going to be canceled and nothing’s going to move forward. But instead, all these other initiatives are already taking place by innovative companies locally, regionally, nationally, and globally, and that’s what I want to get behind. I assume it will be difficult to make solid progress, though, if you don’t have government support, and, in particular, government funds to help drive sustainability initiatives.
Q: Many companies evaluate potential logistics service suppliers at least partly on the basis of their environmental track record. Does that mean suppliers should be prepared to provide data on their carbon emissions?
A: Yes, we know that customers are out there looking for this data. They’ve been telling companies and logistics service providers that they’ll get more business from them if those companies can provide them with not just the physical goods and services, but also the data behind it—including data on the emissions generated in the manufacture and distribution of goods. There’s a renewed push for us to look at these energy systems and think about companies that are innovative. It will cost us money to do these things, but if we continue with business as usual, we’re just amplifying the negative impacts of the past.
Q: Are there ways we can better manage and measure the environmental impacts of our supply chains?
A: Yes. There’s so much going on in the reporting space. For those companies that are trying to figure this out—particularly distribution and logistics service companies—I recommend that they look at the sustainability reports published by the large multinational companies that they’re seeking to work with. Those big companies are signaling what’s already important in their supply chains. Logistics companies can use that information to figure out how they fit in.
There are also a number of other go-to resources for companies seeking information on measuring emissions. The Global Reporting Initiative, or GRI, is the global standard for this. And then there’s the Greenhouse Gas Protocol [a widely used greenhouse gas accounting standards system that categorizes emissions as Scope 1 (direct emissions controlled by the company), Scope 2 (indirect emissions from purchased energy), and Scope 3 (indirect emissions from activities in the company’s entire value chain).] Understand what you’re going to be held accountable for and what you can measure, and account for this. So these are all things that fit into the measurement and management aspect of this.
Q: Are there some easily affordable environmental best practices that supply chain managers should be following now?
A: Easy and affordable are always tough ones, right? Where’s the low-hanging fruit? We should take a step back from this and ask why sustainable practices are perceived as not affordable in the first place. If we think about all that waste that’s in our systems that I talked about before and for which we are not holding anyone accountable, that is something that we can do a better job of measuring, managing, and controlling into the future and not wait for someone else to do it.
Strategic sustainable supply chains are the connections and the enablers of more sustainable energy systems, food systems, and material systems. And the good thing about this is that there are local, state, regional, and national incentives and subsidies for [decarbonizing supply chains].
So if we electrified vehicles, we’d spend 90% less on the energy inputs to those vehicles. I can drive a passenger car 10,000 miles for less than $200 a year, and I do it from a net-positive home. I generate my own electricity. What if all buildings did that, and what if all buildings offloaded energy to batteries, to grids, and to transportation systems? That’s kind of the big view of this from above.
It comes in multiple ways, but we know every building can be more energy-efficient. Transportation vehicles can be more energy-efficient. Don’t assume there’s any one standardized approach that’s right for everyone. Instead, it’s up to individual companies to look for those things that are the best fit for where they are and the local and regional incentives that are available to them.
