Environmental Leader

Companies should be preparing for carbon labeling, according to the latest edition of MIT’s Supply Chain Strategy newsletter, developed by the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics. In response to the green trend of environmental responsibility, the newsletter says that companies may soon be required to show consumers how much carbon their products have generated.

“The supply chain is an integral part of these labeling systems, because it is here where much of the basic information carried on labels is gleaned,” Edgar Blanco and Anthony Craig write in the article. “Research is under way to find a robust methodology for defining this information. Supply chain leaders need to keep abreast of this work and understand the intricacies of carbon labeling before their products come under the microscope.”

Blanco and Craig also suggest that while there are some difficult issues that need to be resolved before such carbon labels are required, supply chain professionals should become aware of the possible implications because they will play a key role in the development of carbon labeling systems.