MIT Report: Corporate commitment to sustainability soars, but roadblocks to execution remain

Corporate commitment to sustainability has reached a record high, but oversight is lagging and external disruptions are keeping companies from delivering transformational results. That’s according to the 2026 State of Supply Chain Sustainability report from the MIT Sustainable Supply Chain Lab at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics (MIT CTL), released this month.

Researchers surveyed 1,810 supply chain professionals across 91 countries and found that 83% rate sustainability as important or very important to long-term business success, the highest level in the report’s seven-year history. What’s more, the report found that corporate commitment has grown despite recent shifts in U.S. climate policy, with 59% saying they have become more committed to sustainability while just 13% say they have become less committed.

Those advances are being tempered by outside factors. Nearly 70% of respondents said that tariff uncertainty has forced their organizations to delay, scale back, or compromise sustainability strategies, and more than eight in 10 said that geopolitical conflict is reducing the effectiveness of climate action.

Internal problems exist as well: The study also found that companies’ public sustainability ambition is outpacing the governance and accountability needed to deliver results.

“Companies with formal cross-functional sustainability teams are far more likely to embed sustainability in everyday decisions: 57% do so frequently or always, compared with 13% where responsibility sits within a single function,” according to the report. “Yet only 51% of companies with public sustainability goals have a formal cross-functional team, and only 33% place oversight at board level. Many companies have set the direction but have not yet built the internal structures needed to turn those commitments into consistent action.”

The effects of geopolitics and governance is just one of four themes examined in the report. The research also evaluates where sustainability efforts “live” in the supply chain, how artificial intelligence is affecting sustainability goals, and how warehousing and freight transportation operations are progressing toward decarbonization.

One of the key findings is that logistics is emerging as a prime area for sustainability action: The research identified daily operations such as transportation and logistics, procurement, warehousing, and product and packaging design as the most common areas companies are applying sustainability efforts today. Those efforts are less visible in areas such as capital investment, network design, and risk planning.

“The pattern suggests that sustainability is becoming part of how companies operate their supply chains faster than it is becoming part of how they design them,” according to the report. “At the same time, the business benefits are tangible: compliance, operational efficiency, and supply chain

visibility are the most widely reported gains, while resilience and risk reduction also rank ahead of direct cost savings. The business case for sustainability is driven more by operational gains than by direct cost savings.”

The full report is available for download from the MIT CTL.