Alex Scott: 0:03

So now if you're a shipper saying, I use these 50 carriers. You can look up those 50 carriers and see what are their emissions profiles, what's the equipment they're using, and that will give you a more accurate data-driven, defensible, scientifically sound method of, of estimating your emissions.

Tom Raftery: 0:23

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast, the number one podcast focusing on sustainability and supply chains, and I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Hi everyone. And welcome to episode nine of the sustainable supply chain podcast. My name is Tom Raftery. And I'm excited to be here with you today sharing the latest insights and trends in supply chain sustainability. In today's episode, we are talking to associate professor Alex Scott from the university of Tennessee Knoxville. And we'd be talking about sustainable logistics. In next week's episode on Monday, the 25th of March, we'll be talking to Hans Thalbauer of UIpath. We'll be talking about AI in that episode. And in the following week's episode, which goes out on the 1st of April, no fool. We'll be talking to Marcus Hoed from Dutch X, where again, we'd be talking about sustainable logistics, but back to today's show and before we kick off the show. I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to all of this podcast's amazing supporters. Your support has been instrumental in keeping this podcast going, and I'm really grateful for each and every one of you. If you're not already a supporter. I'd like to encourage you to consider joining our community of like-minded individuals who are passionate about sustainability and supply chains. Supporting the podcast is easy and affordable. With options starting as low as just three euros or dollars a month. That's less than the cost of a cup of coffee and your support will make a huge difference in keeping the show going strong. To become a supporter, simply click on the support link in the show notes of this or any episode. Or visit tiny url.com/s S C pod. Now. Without further ado. I'd like to introduce my special guest today. Alex, Alex, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Alex Scott: 2:13

Yes. Hello Tom. Thank you for having me. My name's Alex Scott. I'm an associate professor of Supply Chain Management at the University of Tennessee in, Knoxville, Tennessee. I've been in and around supply chain management for about 20, a little bit over 20 years. Spent about 10 years in industry working for a large transportation company in a large third party logistics company a 3pl. And then about five or six years consulting around the world. So a lot of time in Europe and Asia and South America. So designing supply chain, supply chain strategy type projects. In the last decade, a little bit over a decade I've been in academia. So I, I kind of, after 10 years, went back in, in academia. I, I do research on, in academia most recently, in the last three to four years looking at sustainability particularly in logistics because of so many changes going on in that arena. So the last three or four years I've been focusing on sustainability in the logistics space.

Tom Raftery: 3:06

Superb. Superb, and we'll get into that in a second. But I'm always interested when I have academics on the podcast, you know how is the likes of supply chain perceived by students coming into university? Why do they choose it? You know, what are they going for? Because, a lot of people who come on this podcast who are supply chain professionals fell into supply chain through some other route. I'm a biologist and a technologist. I never studied supply chain. So I think the discipline, and correct me if I'm wrong, but my, my, my thinking is the discipline of supply chain in academia is relatively new. So I'm wondering, you know, can you talk a little bit about that and why, and how students pick it?

Alex Scott: 3:50

No, you're absolutely right. So I, I myself was an engineer, right? So my background was engineering and I got hired into kind of supply chain logistics roles.'cause really even 20 or so years ago, there weren't many supply chain programs. They were really just starting to be born. So do we get many student... well, first of all in Tennessee we have a huge program. At least in the past few years, we have been actually the largest major supply chain management has been the largest major in the entire system in the entire of state of Tennessee. So we have a large program. There's a number of other large programs but not that many students come into university, as you say, desiring to be supply chain management. They're more like, what is supply chain management? Not, not I want to be one. And, but that, that is changing. One thing is covid I, I think, has really changed that. But students do see the job opportunities and I mean, we do real things. You know, every big company needs these people. And so there's the jobs and so where jobs are students will often go. So, so we get a lot of people, se you know, sophomore, junior, second, third year decide they want to be supply chain majors. And Covid changed a lot of that though. So because it became front page news, right? The shortage of toilet paper became front page news all of a sudden. Didn't use to be front page news, but and so that was also was a boom in terms of students coming in and knowing what it is and being interested in it.

Tom Raftery: 5:06

Nice. And you say you are now concentrating for the last few years on sustainability in supply chain, particularly in logistics. Why?

Alex Scott: 5:16

Yeah, well, you know, obviously imperative around you know, the environment and emissions and climate change and all of that. That's, that's a broader thing. But on a more micro scale there have been a lot of changes in terms of laws and regulations that companies are facing. There have been voluntary climate pledges that these companies are putting forth. And so if you have that usually what goes along with that is you have to measure your emissions. And in supply chains and logistics, this is not historically been done. So it's new. There's a lot of uncertainty. There's a lot we don't know and a lot we need to figure out. And so I, you know, it's a really interesting area to be in. You know, I, I, you know, it's an interesting area to be in.

Tom Raftery: 5:57

So if I am a logistics manager for an organization, I either am responding to regulations or I'm responding to my company's pledge to get to net zero by 3050.

Alex Scott: 6:13

Yes, both of those things actually. So if we and that's a point I always try to get across.'cause I often talk to like MBAs, master's, you know. Oh, you know, people working right, working professionals. I try to get across, it's actually both of those things. So we have changing regulations, right? The EU has rules that have been set forth. California has passed a law that applies to basically every company over a billion dollars. So like something over 5,000 company companies, the Securities and Exchange Commission here in the US, also is considering a rule where and so they oversee all public companies and so they're considering a rule making companies disclose their emissions. And so in those three things you have the rules are all what we call scope three emissions, which I just call supply chain emissions, right? You can call 'em Scope three, which are things not directly owned by you, but if you just think of it, it's the direct, it's. Supply chain emissions. And so you have those rules and regulations coming forth and, and they're being implemented now. Then you also have voluntary pledges. So if you have a voluntary pledge, you might think as a company, oh, I just said this, this gives me nice press and marketing, but there's actually teeth behind that. And the, the, the question, it's not obvious what those teeth are. Well, the teeth are that if you make a pledge, you say you're going to have emissions targets or emissions reductions. What goes goes with that is typically measuring those emissions and what's the risk if you don't do it? Well, at least here in the United States, we have a lot of creative plaintiff's lawyers, you know, if a plaintiff lawyers, someone who brings forth lawsuits, right? And so, I'm sure that's around the world as well, but if you make a pledge and don't follow through, you are at risk of one of those potential lawsuits. In fact, there's two big ones that are, you know, you can find on the internet very easily. One, a big airline company and another, a big food manufacturer. And that's actually the EU food manufacturer. And these companies are being, you know, being sued by plaintiff's lawyers claiming, well you said this climate neutrality you are gonna reduce your emissions. But you're not measuring that or you're not actually climate neutral, and so you're damaged my, my, you know, person I'm representing the per and, and so then there's this big lawsuit. And so even if you have the the rules and regulations, if you don't have that, but you have a climate pledge, you still kind, have, are supposed to follow through up, follow through with it.

Tom Raftery: 8:31

Sure, I'm sure as well. I mean, I dunno if this has happened, but I'm sure as well making a pledge like that has to have some kind of effect on the share price and so shareholders can start to take notice of these pledges and take action if they're not acted on, because if they make a pledge and it's not acted on, that is a, a, a risk to the brand, which can also affect the share price right?.

Alex Scott: 8:55

Absolutely right. So you are supposed to, if you're a public company, report major risks. And, and, and that's actually one of the basis for the securities and exchange, the SEC rules, is that climate risk could arguably be a financial risk, and then it falls under the purview of the SEC. That's, I think, the main reasoning behind that. And so, yes. You're exactly right. You have one of these pledges out there. You don't follow through with it. You're increasing a potential risk. Maybe it's a legal risk you would think that would need to be disclosed. Yep.

Tom Raftery: 9:26

Interesting. Okay. And logistics. I mean, we're, we're talking when, when we're talking logistics, we're talking fleets essentially, correct?

Alex Scott: 9:35

Yeah. When I say logistics, I mean mostly transportation and warehousing and inventory, right? I, I, those are the kind of three big buckets I, I put logistics in. Mostly it's outbound logistics, so from the plant to the DC to the customer. Some you more and more have reverse logistics right on the back end and or circular economy, these kinds of things. But yeah, I, I, you know, you tend to think of transportation, warehousing, and then inventory management of that.

Tom Raftery: 10:00

Okay. And what's happening in that space at the moment in terms of sustainability?

Alex Scott: 10:07

Yes. Well, so in many, many cases these are outsourced services, right? So the, the whole concept of a 3pl third party logistics company is an outsourced service. So this would fall under a, a scope three emission, if you outsource this, you hire some carrier, right? I think of the ocean. Think of ocean carriers. I mean, hardly any shipper has their own ocean fleet they're operating. They, they just use Maersk or one of these other big Ocean operators. And, and so that is a Scope three emission. It's a logistics emission. And so logistics managers and supply chain managers are now being tasked with, oh, well you, you make stuff in Southeast Asia, you ship it to Europe or the US it goes now within the US and it's several different points and it's maybe hitting five or 10 different companies. You, you need to now estimate those emissions and report those emissions. So that's not easy to do as you can imagine.

Tom Raftery: 10:59

Yeah. Yep. And so how do you do it? Now, just for, for reference, I had a couple of weeks ago a company on the podcast called Go Comet, and they cover emissions for shipping. The likes of the Maersk's and people like that. And, and for people who are using those companies particularly. So they have data on all of the, not just the companies, but all of the individual ships, and not just the individual ships, but the engines in those individual ships, and they know the routes and et cetera, et cetera, so they can calculate the emissions that way, you're doing something similar, right?

Alex Scott: 11:37

Yes, yes. That's a great example, right? So, in your example, you have a ship that's 20 years old versus a ship that might be really new. Well, there can be a very different emissions profile of those two ships, meaning it, it makes that movement, the older ship is probably going to emit a lot, le a lot more emissions. So you, you're talking about that on the, the ocean space. Well, you also have to think about on the ground transportation space. You, you also have to think about the rail space and parcel and, and air. But let's talk about what I focus on, which is the ground transportation space, which is. In the US and in Europe really certainly in the US it's the largest and most per pervasive mode, right? Everything, you touch, everything on that you know, shelf behind you was probably hit by a truck at some point, was on a truck at some point. And so that's what we specialize on. And so what, what I've developed over the last two years or so is a database. It's US centric, but it, the, the idea could be taken elsewhere. It's just to get the data is the hard part, right? Where we have the information on hundreds of thousands, over 400,000 trucking companies in the United States. We have data on the trucks they're operating, including things that you mentioned, like the engines and and the years and these kinds of things. And so from that you can get a relatively accurate estimate based on primary data, right? Direct data as opposed to the historic method. So I guess, yeah, so the historic method might be using like literally one factor, one number. So I move one truck from A to B. Well, historically it's just, oh, just use this one number. Because we don't have any better information. And when I say historic, I mean companies are still doing it now. So I guess it's not really historic, but that is still done in, in most cases. So what we are offering is a way to base it on the actual carrier trucking company you are using.

Tom Raftery: 13:27

So I guess first, why would I want to do that? Maybe the number I get from your system actually means or shows my emissions higher than the, if I just pick a number kind of method. So will that make me look worse?

Alex Scott: 13:44

Well, that would be, that would be bad. So if you're using a number lower than what you actually are, that's a topic I'm sure you're familiar with called Greenwashing. Right? So. You run into that potential risk and, and you know, you could say, oh, let's just assume everything is a model year, 2023 truck, the newest, cleanest truck. Let's assume that. Well, I mean, if that's not true and you're reporting that though, and you, you really don't have any basis for reporting that you could get yourself back, you know, circling back to what we spoke about earlier into that legal risk category. So you want to look at international standards and what they recommend you to do which is typically things like you'll hear words like primary data, reasonable basis, timely data. So you kind of wanna follow those rules to try to at least have a sound basis for how you are estimating emissions. There's another reason to do it is one is it incentivize both shippers and carriers to use those cleaner trucks, right? So if I use one, if I use one number and it doesn't matter whether I use a 2023 truck or a 2003 truck well then why don't we just use the 2003 truck if it's cheaper, right? And, and so we want to reward these companies that are investing in that cleaner equipment and reducing their emissions. And so that's why, why you would want to use the more specific data. Another reason is when you're thinking about estimating these admissions, think about yourself in front of a judge or a jury, right? And, and you are saying, here are my emissions. And here's how I came up with those emissions. And so I, you know, I do expert witness work and I do consulting work. So I, I often think, what does a, what might the other side say when they're poking holes at your argument, right? So you want to have something that's defensible so that if someone does start poking holes, well, how'd you get that number? Where'd that come from? You want to have something to fall back on and say, well, it's based on this data from this sound you know, maybe it's from the EPA, right? So we have data from the Environmental Protection Agency, biggest environmental group in the US. You know, we have data from that. So if you can point to this and that and this you're in a much more defensible position.

Tom Raftery: 15:51

Okay. Well, talk to me a little bit then about your methodology and how I might use it if I am a logistics manager.

Alex Scott: 16:01

Yes. So let's say you are, you have ground transportation in the United States, meaning you use trucks in the United States, which is pretty much every major supply chain, right? Action. No, I could take away the word major. Pretty much every supply chain uses many, many trucks. It's, it's a, it's a huge industry. Something like 700, six or $700 billion. So you have these shipments and you use these carriers, right? So a, a trucking firm, I call it carrier. And they have trucks, right? So these carriers have trucks. You could have a thousand trucks or you could have 15 trucks. I might use these carriers, and those carriers have trucks that they use. One carrier might have 2023 trucks. One carrier might have 2003 trucks. And that is literally true. That's not an exaggeration. That literally might be true. And so we have data on those carriers. And so now if you're a shipper saying, I use these 50 carriers. You can look up those 50 carriers and see what are their emissions profiles, what's the equipment they're using, and that will give you a more accurate data-driven, defensible scientifically sound method of, of estimating your emissions.

Tom Raftery: 17:07

And how specific is it? I mean, does it get down to the individual truck? And if so, I mean, if I'm using a particular carrier, how do I know which trucks they're using?

Alex Scott: 17:17

Yes, so that's a great question. So we have data on the specific trucks of these specific carriers. Now, if you are saying on my specific load, what is the specific truck? They would have to report that information to you, which they don't typically do, right? Because obviously we aren't gonna know which truck was used to haul your load, right? No. Only the carrier will know that. It's not common for the carrier and the shipper to share that information. Now you could theoretically and you could then just use an emissions factor based on that truck. But we, I think it's more plausible, at least in the short to medium term, to use carrier specific emissions factors. And there's a good reason for that because shippers choose carriers. Shippers do not choose trucks, right? So when you're contracting with, you're a shipper, right? You're contracting with a carrier. You don't say, oh, well I'm going to, you know, these 10 trucks in your fleet is what I'm going to use. No, you, you contract with that carrier and then they optimize within their network, right? I've worked for a large carrier for for several years as an engineer, right? You want to let those carriers optimize within their network. You do not want to be picking.'cause imagine if you said, oh, well you can only use a 2023 truck. Well, they might have a truck sitting right next to you ready to use, oh, it was a 2020 truck. Well, but our 2023 is across the country, so are they gonna have to reposition their 2023 truck to move your load? So you really don't want to constrain. Now this gets to modeling and optimization and constraints. You don't want to constrain the carrier's decisions. You want them to be as efficient as possible. So you wanna choose the carrier and you must score 'em based on that, not choosing the trucks. That's my opinion, but yeah.

Tom Raftery: 18:52

Okay, sure. And so if I do utilize your system, it's called the Fleet Sustainability Index, Correct.

Alex Scott: 19:01

Correct.

Tom Raftery: 19:02

Okay, so if I'm using that, how do I, how do I access it? Is it through an API, do I download a database? You know, do I get a CD to install? Presumably not there. Presumably we've gone beyond that. So how does it actually work?

Alex Scott: 19:19

Yeah, it actually two ways, and it, that's the beauty of the, the modern age we're in is, so the, the first one is a web app, right? A web application that someone could literally sign up and get access to this in 30 seconds. And it, you know, it's, it's all on a, a web app. So if you have a browser, you can log in and, and it will have, provide you direct access to those over 400,000 carriers. We also have an API. Yes. So you could encode you know, say you have Python or whatever you, you, you can call the API and bring that data back. You're calling it based on carriers and it'll give you the data with that carrier. And so those are the two main ways, a, a web app and an API.

Tom Raftery: 20:00

Okay, and I can then suck that into my ERP system or my SMS, my Sustainability management system and have it output reports for me.

Alex Scott: 20:44

Yes, absolutely. So yeah, one way is you could just bring, so let's say you had a whole lot of carriers, you could just use the API. You could either run it monthly or run it in real time as you're needing to call it. But you could bring that back into your systems and use it for your reporting. The web app let's say you're running a sourcing event and you're considering a hundred carriers, right? So you have the, some information from the carriers. They typically do price, service, safety, right? And so, so when you're choosing providers, those are typically the big things. Price, service, safety. Well, we want sustainability to be that fourth. And so if you have those a hundred carriers. You put it into that web app, hits search, it's gonna bring it back to you, push it to Excel or to a CSV and in Excel, and and then you go from there. So API, you could do like real time reporting as it's happening and we, the web app is really useful for searching for carriers and, you know, and procurement events, those kinds of things.

Tom Raftery: 21:34

Interesting. Okay. Okay. How has the reception for this been?

Alex Scott: 21:42

It's been good. Yeah. We have several customers using it now. I mean, we started launching it, you know, we launched it just before the end of just before the end of 2023. And you know, it's complicated how you being an academic and it goes through a research foundation. Which then gets commercialized through a company that I also set up. So it's kind of a long process and, and something we business professors don't usually do. Believe it or not, even though we teach business, we don't usually set up small businesses. So, so yes, we, we went live about two months ago and we have a lot of good lot good reaction to it. We've shown it to many people. We've had a few webinars and we have several customers using it now and you know, hopefully a lot more in the future.'cause I think this is important for choosing. And, and incentivizing carriers to use cleaner equipment.

Tom Raftery: 22:27

Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. When I talked to Go Comet about their maritime emissions tracking, one of the points I made to them was because they have all this data now, they can start to produce annual reports showing global emissions for maritime and watch hopefully those numbers coming down year on year, on year. Is that something, are, are you looking at doing something similar with ground transportation emissions year on year, or is that beyond the scope of what you're planning?

Alex Scott: 23:01

Oh, no, that's, that's absolutely something that can be done. I, in fact, I have data going back at least 10 years if one wanted to dig into the database, which would be easy enough to do. Yeah. And, and the, the beauty is your emissions will naturally fall. If those carriers, so there's two ways. One is if you select actively select cleaner carriers, that's one way. But naturally, these these carriers are replacing equipment over time, right? And if equipment's getting cleaner over time, then naturally your emissions will fall year over year. Right? So, you use a big trucking company. They have on average 2022 model year trucks right now. Well, next year they'll, they're continually replacing their trucks and so, they'll have cleaner trucks next year. And so your scores will continue to track down just naturally.

Tom Raftery: 23:44

Okay, but you reckon that using a device like this, the this, this platform will be a kind of a forcing function for the carriers.

Alex Scott: 23:55

Yes. Actually, actually two, two points here.'cause I actually want to go back to that one. Is that because if you use one number, that's not the case, right? So if you just use one flat number, you wouldn't see it track down because this, equipment being replaced. But yes, back to your question here is that yes, this is a market driven solution. So you're a, you're a shipper who wants to select cleaner carriers that provides a carrier with an incentive to select cleaner equipment, right? So without government oversight requirements, you can, you know, use that preference you know, enforce your preferences on the market by providing that incentive, by choosing cleaner carriers who then choose cleaner trucks. Because if you think about a truck right now, or, or, or ocean, you know, ship or whatever the emissions are what we call externalities. Right. So, you know, the, the person emitting it doesn't really bear the cost of those emissions, right? So the guy driving the, actually the guy who moved me here to Tennessee showed up in a 1999 model year truck, right? That guy driving the 1999 model year truck, which is, I mean, is way worse. Than say a new truck. But he doesn't, you know, it's just going up in the atmosphere. It doesn't, doesn't affect him. And, and so we want the people driving the trucks to, in some way absorb some of that externality. And, and, and by providing data on which trucks these people are driving, then shippers can kind of, provide that incentive for, to, to consider that cost of that emissions going into the atmosphere.

Tom Raftery: 25:22

Yeah. Yeah. You're, you're sending a demand signal essentially.

Alex Scott: 25:25

Exactly. Yes.

Tom Raftery: 25:27

Okay. Nice. Do you have any success stories of customers you can talk to? Or is it too early yet in the lifetime of the, the index?

Alex Scott: 25:37

Well, I mean, it is, it is early. We are working with a large broker who has been providing you know, how frequently they provide their reports I don't know, but I think they, they have provided for at least eight to 10 of their customers, reports on the emissions associated with the loads of the broker is moving for them to allow that, that shipper, then to use that information in their select in their reporting metrics and considering who they use. So, 'cause think of this, this, this is one of the complexity of the logistics industry. You have a shipper, well a lot of shippers use what are called brokers, right? And brokers are the middlemen. And then you, and this is true in Europe too, right?'cause Europe has a, a very fragmented trucking market, hundreds of thousands of carriers most of them small. And so you have all of these small carriers and you, so you get a broker who aggregates, right? And then I'm a shipper. I don't wanna, I don't want to contract with all of those small carriers. I wanna contract with the broker who contracts with those small carriers. And so, and so that makes it really hard for the shipper. So now all of a sudden the broker has that information, and this is the success story of all the literally tens of thousands of carriers they use, which they can get that data. And now they're reporting that back to their shippers. And that was to eight to 10 large shippers. You would know the names. I'm not gonna name 'em, but they're, you know, you would know the names and so yes, I think that's a pretty big success story.

Tom Raftery: 26:51

Nice and so who is, do you think, I mean, I, again, I know it's early days. Who do you think is your target customer? Is it logistics managers? Is it brokers, as you said, is it, I don't know, carriers themselves or a combination of all of the above? What, what, what's your feeling on that?

Alex Scott: 27:13

Yes, I would say shippers and brokers are the primary market. We have had conversation with carriers, but the bigger one would be shippers and brokers who need to now estimate their emissions and want to choose if, you know, according to their sustainability goals, want to choose cleaner partners to do business with. So, so brokers are a big potential market because getting all of the information on all of those carriers they use is hard. And so that in that case, a middleman, like basically we're a data aggregator can provide a lot of value. Shippers are a natural customer because they are subject to most of these rules. And so the question for the shipper is, well, how are you gonna estimate your scope three admissions. And if you wanna do it data-driven and, and science-based, then you want to have information on that. You know, the, the carriers and the trucks they're using.

Tom Raftery: 28:01

Okay. Nice, nice, nice. Cool. And where to next? I mean. You've got this out in the marketplace now people can look for it, find it, sign up, as you said, start using it. What are your plans for the next 3, 4, 5, 10 years for the app?

Alex Scott: 28:18

Yes. Well, one is to grow adoption. Certainly we want to become somewhat close to, you know, we'd love to become the industry standard. There really is nothing out there right now. You may have heard of something called the SmartWay program. It's the EPA SmartWay program. It's a a program from the EPA that's focused on the trucking industry, but they have, you know, the adoption is only like 4,000 carriers. And so there's really not a solution if you use most of these carriers out there, that provides you information that, so we want to be the, the industry standard for that information. And I think it makes a lot of sense to have one or two data aggregators be the industry standard. So that's our goal is, is adoption. Of course there will be customer needs and, and changes as they arise, but but really we're focusing on adoption at this point.

Tom Raftery: 29:04

Okay, cool. Great. We're coming towards the end of the podcast now. Is there any question I didn't ask you, Alex, that you wish I had or any aspect of this we haven't touched? On that you think it's important for people to think about?

Alex Scott: 29:20

Yes. I think it's really gets down to how you measure emissions in the modeling versus accuracy trade off you always face, right? So, if you run a power plant. Often they will have direct monitoring equipment on that power plant. As emissions go up, you're, you're measuring those. In supply chains, we really aren't gonna have that. Right. You don't put, you're not gonna put a tailpipe monitor on the back of every truck. You're not gonna necessarily have monitoring of the emissions of a ship, a cargo ship, or something. And so we have to model and we have to estimate those things. And what I find, and you know, so I have a modeling background 'cause I'm an engineer and whatnot, but I find that a lot of people who don't do that as a profession sometimes struggle with that trade off of what is accurate, what is accurate enough, what is good enough. We can always get more in more, more factors in involved in this. But as you add factors that adds data requirements. That adds complexity. And, and so there's really kind of a sweet spot as to how accurate and how much data you want to collect that a lot of people, you know, a lot of people struggle with. And it's a, and it's an important question.

Tom Raftery: 30:24

Kinda like an 80 20 rule for our data.

Alex Scott: 30:28

Exactly. Exactly. Yes. An 80 20 rule. And maybe my favorite quote, and this has been used a lot, but it's "All models are wrong. Some models are useful". We want a useful model. We want a model that provides a, a model. When I say model a way of estimating emissions, we want a way of estimating emissions to provide the right incentives to reduce emissions.

Tom Raftery: 30:48

Fantastic. Cool. Great. Alex, that's been really interesting. If people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Alex Scott: 30:58

Yes. So the company is called Sustainable Logistics. The website is www dot sus. Stain log.com. You know, I'm also at the University of Tennessee, so Alex Scott at the University of Tennessee is easy to you know, I'm easy to find, so I'd be happy to interact with anybody with questions or comments.

Tom Raftery: 31:14

Fantastic. Great. I'll put some of those links in the show notes so people can reach out. Cool. Alex, that's been fascinating. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Alex Scott: 31:22

Thank you for having me, Tom.

Tom Raftery: 31:24

Okay. Thank you all for tuning into this episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast with me, Tom Raftery. Each week, thousands of supply chain professionals listen to this show. If you or your organization want to connect with this dedicated audience, consider becoming a sponsor. You can opt for exclusive episode branding where you choose the guests or a personalized 30 second ad roll. It's a unique opportunity to reach industry experts and influencers. For more details, hit me up on Twitter or LinkedIn, or drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com. Together, let's shape the future of sustainable supply chains. Thanks. Catch you all next time.