Offsetting or reducing CO2: This is what consumers want

Peer-Reviewed Publication

KÜHNE LOGISTICS UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: AUTHOR OF THE STUDY view more 

CREDIT: KLU

Whether it’s recycled aluminum at Apple’s MacBook Air or compensation payments from Microsoft for emissions over the life of an Xbox, climate-friendly products are becoming more and more popular. But do consumers also pay attention to how a neutral climate balance is created? Companies use two ways to accomplish this goal: reducing emissions directly or compensating them afterward. “Both approaches can make a product climate-neutral and have a positive impact on the environment, while compensatory measures are being discussed more and more critically in the public. To this end, the consumers in our study were only willing to spend more on the respective product if emissions were reduced,” says Prof. Christian Troester, Ph.D.. The reasons for this behavior are not entirely clear. “Consumers might show greater appreciation for companies that actively protect the environment by developing innovative processes,” says Troester.

There is one exception: If the emissions cannot be influenced by the company, for example, if they already arise during extraction of raw materials, compensation and reduction are perceived as equivalent. “The willingness to spend more money on a climate-friendly product tends to be higher the more environmentally conscious consumers are,” says Dr. Nils Roemer (Universität Hamburg).

Recommendation to companies: Communicate green actions transparently

Studies show1: Consumers are increasingly aware of the social and environmental consequences of their purchasing decisions, and many companies are therefore already taking action and acting more ecologically. However, not all of them communicate these measures for fear of being accused of "greenwashing" – that is, of whitewashing their own activities.

Clear communication about whether and how emissions are reduced is particularly important for companies, according to the study’s results. “This allows companies that actively reduce emissions to differentiate themselves from competitors who merely compensate,” says Prof. Troester. A clear breakdown of controllable and non-controllable emission components could also be important for this matter. In addition, it can be more expensive for a company to invest in innovative processes that reduce CO2 emissions. However, the results of the study suggest that these investments may be worthwhile, as consumers are willing to pay for them.

Additional information:
The results of the study are based on an online survey with around 200 participants and an experiment with around 80 participants.

1 CDP (2019). Top FMCGs in race to keep up with conscious consumers. www.cdp.net/en/articles/media/top-fmcgs-in-race-to-keep-up-with-conscious-consumers   
Nielsen (2018). Global consumers seek companies that care about environmental issues. nielseniq.com/global/en/insights/analysis/2018/global-consumers-seek-companies-that-care-about-environmental-issues/
Golob, U., & Kronegger, L. (2019). Environmental consciousness of European consumers: A segmentation-based study. Journal of Cleaner Production, 221, 1–9

Publication: N. Roemer, G.C. Souza, C. Troest and G. Voigt: Offset or reduce: How should firms implement carbon footprint reduction initiatives? Production and Operations Management https://doi.org/10.1111/poms.14017

Pictures of Prof. Christan Troester and KLU to download: https://www.skyfish.com/sh/q46f3ynl/1b090398/2288727/sorting/created/order/desc

About KLU
Kühne Logistics University – Wissenschaftliche Hochschule für Logistik und Unternehmensführung (KLU) – is a private university located in Hamburg’s HafenCity. The independent, state-certified university’s major research areas are Sustainability, Digital Transformation, Entrepreneurship & Value Creation in the fields of Transport, Global Logistics, and Supply Chain Management.

KLU is one of very few private universities in Germany entitled to confer their own PhDs.

With one BSc and three MSc degree programs, a structured doctoral program, and a part-time Executive MBA, KLU offers its 400 full-time students a high level of specialization and excellent learning conditions. KLU has an international team of around 30 professors who teach in English. In open, tailor-made management seminar series, industry specialists and managers alike benefit from the application of academic findings to practical issues.

► Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter (@THE_KLU).
► KLU research, events & executive education: KLU Business Newsletter (https://www.the-klu.org/landingpages/newsletter)
► More Information: www.the-klu.org

 

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JOURNAL

Production and Operations Management

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Offsetting or reducing CO2: This is what consumers want

 

Mars: Was Olympus Mons once a giant volcanic island?

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CNRS

 

IMAGE: OLYMPUS MONS: A VOLCANIC ISLAND IN THE MIDDLE OF A VANISHED MARTIAN OCEAN. view more 

CREDIT: © A.HILDENBRAND/GEOPS/CNRS (IMAGE PRODUCED FROM MOLA PUBLIC DATA)

Imagine a volcanic island about the size of France and over 20,000 metres high. Such a landscape may once have existed on the planet Mars. Published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters on July 24, recent work led by a CNRS researcher1 shows that the giant Olympus Mons volcano on Mars shares morphological similarities with many active volcanic islands on Earth. Scientists believe they are the result of contact between liquid water and lava from the volcano. Similar features on the northern flank of the Alba Mons volcano, located more than 1,500 km from Olympus Mons, also support the idea that a vast ocean of liquid water once occupied the Red Planet's northern lowlands. Precise dating of these volcanic rocks could provide a considerable amount of information about the climatic evolution of Mars.

1. At the Laboratoire Géosciences Paris-Saclay (CNRS/Université Paris-Saclay).

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JOURNAL

Earth and Planetary Science Letters

DOI

10.1016/j.epsl.2023.118302 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

A giant volcanic island in an early Martian Ocean?

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-Jul-2023

 

Road salt pollution in many US lakes could stabilize at or below thresholds set by the EPA

Lakes have been growing increasingly salty due to road de-icing, but a new analysis suggests with careful action, concentrations may stabilize

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CARY INSTITUTE OF ECOSYSTEM STUDIES

 

IMAGE: THE MODEL’S PREDICTIONS FOR WHERE ROAD SALT CONCENTRATIONS WILL STABILIZE IN 461,567 LAKES AND RESERVOIRS LARGER THAN 2.5 ACRES. EACH POINT ON THE MAP REPRESENTS A LAKE OR RESERVOIR. THE PREDICTIONS ASSUME THAT ROAD DENSITY AND SALT APPLICATION RATE PER UNIT OF ROAD REMAIN CONSTANT AT MEAN 2010-2015 LEVELS. view more 

CREDIT: SOLOMON, C.T., DUGAN, H.A., HINTZ, W.D., JONES, S.E. (2023). UPPER LIMITS FOR ROAD SALT POLLUTION IN LAKES. LIMNOLOGY AND OCEANOGRAPHY LETTERS.

Since de-icing with road salt began in the 1930s, the salinity of lakes across much of the US has been steadily increasing, posing a potential threat to aquatic life and drinking water supplies. However, a cautiously optimistic new study in Limnology and Oceanography Letters concludes that if we can hold steady or decrease road salt use, levels in many lakes could stabilize below thresholds set by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

“For the majority of US lakes, road salt pollution could be a solvable problem, if we put our minds to it,” said lead author Chris Solomon, who studies lake ecology at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. However, he cautions that more research is needed to better understand what actually is a safe level of salt in a freshwater ecosystem.

The US applies an estimated 24.5 million tons of road salt on its roads every winter — mostly in the form of sodium chloride. Rain and melting snow carry this salt into local waterways and aquifers, where it can cause freshwater salinization syndrome. Not only is this salt harmful to many organisms, but it can leach toxic metals and radioactive materials from soil and water pipes.

Solomon saw the upward-trending lines of salt concentrations in US lakes and wanted to find out where they were headed. Would road salt levels continue to rise, or would they stabilize? With colleagues, he developed a model to explore controls on road salt concentration in lakes to reveal the concentration at which they might level off. 

The model looked at road density in lake watersheds, the amount of road salt applied per road mile, and precipitation. Hydrologic fluxes were taken into account to predict how salt pollution flows into and out of lakes. The model calculated the levels at which road salt would be expected to stabilize if salt application was held at amounts reported in 2010-2015, for all of the 461,000 lakes and reservoirs larger than 2.5 acres in the contiguous US. 

For lakes in areas with light to moderate road density, the authors found that holding road salt application rates steady could help lakes stabilize below 230 mg/l of chloride per liter of water, the threshold designated by the EPA to protect aquatic life. Reducing application could yield additional environmental and economic benefits without threatening road safety.

The authors note that more research is needed to determine if the EPA’s 230 mg/l chloride threshold is too high. Solomon explains, “The EPA’s chronic toxicity thresholds for chloride were developed with limited data, and there is growing evidence that negative impacts can occur at concentrations well below 230 mg/l.” Even less is known about how salt mixtures from multiple sources affect aquatic life.

Some places have set much lower chloride guidelines, including 150 mg/L in Michigan and 120 mg/L in Canada. The model predicts that chloride concentrations will eventually exceed the 120 mg/L threshold in more than 9,000 US lakes, even if road density and salt application rates stay at current levels.

Unsurprisingly, lakes with predicted salt concentrations in excess of EPA’s 230 mg/l thresholds were most common in the Northeast and Midwest. Most vulnerable were lakes with high road density and high road salt application in their watersheds. They included some 9-10% of lakes in Illinois and Ohio, as well as a smaller percentage of lakes (<0.1 to 1%) in Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Achieving safe salt levels in these lakes will require reductions in salt use. This can be done safely by adopting best management practices and new technologies. 

As a test of the model’s accuracy, predictions were compared to measurements taken at Mirror Lake in New Hampshire, a site that has been monitored since 1967 by Cary Institute founder Gene E. Likens. After plugging in the local data, the model predicted maximum and minimum salt levels, and the real-world measurements fell within the predicted range. “This gives us confidence that we're in the right ballpark,” said Solomon. 

“We don't think the model is perfect. It's a simple model that's meant as a tool for thinking through the problem,” Solomon says. Among other things, the model ignores salt inputs from natural rock weathering and from human activities like agriculture and industry, and does not consider temporary seasonal spikes in chloride. “We hope others will elaborate on the approach and make better predictions. But in the meantime our results suggest that efforts to control salt application can make a big difference, and may help to prioritize those efforts,” Solomon concludes. 

Next steps include comparing the model’s predictions to observed data in other places where salt application and lake chloride levels have been documented for many years, and using the model to explore how other forms of global change — such as land use or climate change — alter both precipitation and the need for road salt application. 

A loader pours salt into the back of a truck

CREDIT

Seattle Department of Transportation

Citation

Solomon, C.T., Dugan, H.A., Hintz, W.D., Jones, S.E. (2023). Upper limits for road salt pollution in lakes. Limnology and Oceanography Letters. 

 

Investigators

Christopher T. Solomon - Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

Hilary A. Dugan - University of Wisconsin–Madison

William D. Hintz - The University of Toledo

Stuart E. Jones - University of Notre Dame

 

This research is based on work supported in part by the National Science Foundation.

Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies is an independent nonprofit center for environmental research. Since 1983, our scientists have been investigating the complex interactions that govern the natural world and the impacts of climate change on these systems. Our findings lead to more effective resource management, policy actions, and environmental literacy. Staff are global experts in the ecology of: cities, disease, forests, and freshwater.

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JOURNAL

Limnology and Oceanography Letters

DOI

10.1002/lol2.10339 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Upper limits for road salt pollution in lakes

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

25-Jul-2023

 

Spraying just 12% of the room kills 85% of the mosquitoes

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PNAS NEXUS

A study in a semi-natural setting finds that targeting just the very bottom of a room’s walls with insecticide will kill most of the mosquitoes, suggesting a cheaper and easier way to treat houses during disease outbreaks. The mosquito Aedes aegypti is a vector for serious diseases, including dengue, chikungunya and Zika. In Asia and Latin America, one approach taken to control mosquitoes that rest inside homes is indoor residual spraying, in which interior walls are coated with a persistent insecticide. However, the large surface area that must be coated makes the approach expensive to implement. Luca Facchinelli and colleagues sought to identify a more precise “kill zone” to make indoor residual spraying cheaper and easier for individual householders to undertake on their own. The authors ran a series of experiments using sticky strips mounted at different wall heights to explore where mosquitoes choose to rest. Most mosquitoes chose to rest near the floor, with most of the insects choosing to perch on the first 20 centimeters of the wall, corresponding to 12.3% of the total wall surface. The hotter the room, the further down the mosquitoes tended to rest, as the lower part of the room is typically cooler. Spraying just in this bottommost zone could kill over 85% of the mosquitoes in the house, according to the author’s estimates—especially if this zone is colored black, as Aedes aegypti are known to prefer to perch on dark surfaces. Individual householders could easily apply insecticidal paint or an insecticide sprayed with a handheld aerosol can to this easily accessible zone, according to the authors.

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JOURNAL

PNAS Nexus

DOI

10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad226 

ARTICLE TITLE

Mapping Aedes aegypti indoor resting behavior reveals a preference vulnerable to householder-led vector control

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

25-Jul-2023

 

SwRI developing advanced electronic warfare system for U.S. Air Force

Ultra-wideband receiver achieves rapid signal detection, increased bandwidth

Grant and Award Announcement

SOUTHWEST RESEARCH INSTITUTE

 

IMAGE: SWRI ENGINEERS SET UP A DEVELOPMENTAL CHASSIS FOR THE ULTRA-WIDEBAND (UWR) RECEIVER. THE UWR SYSTEM, WHICH CONTAINS POWERFUL SIGNAL ACQUISITION ALGORITHMS, ACHIEVES “CONSTANT STARING” OVER THE ENTIRE ELECTROMAGNETIC WARFARE FREQUENCY RANGE USING A SINGLE PROCESSING CARD, VISIBLE HERE IN THE CENTER, MARKED BY TWO SMALL GREEN LIGHTS. view more 

CREDIT: SOUTHWEST RESEARCH INSTITUTE

SAN ANTONIO — July 25, 2023 —The U.S. Air Force awarded Southwest Research Institute a $4.8 million contract to further develop an adaptable, “continuously staring,” next-generation electronic warfare system capable of detecting advanced enemy radar signals. Using cutting-edge algorithms in a congested signal test environment, the system demonstrated more than 99% probability of intercepting signals with no false detections in a USAF verified simulated environment, a software model loaded with enemy radar.

“Eliminating false detections is crucial, as they force the pilot and plane to divert scarce resources to defeat an ‘enemy’ that’s not there,” said SwRI’s Jarrett Holcomb, who is part of the technology development team. “As we strive for the fastest detection rate possible, our algorithms provide unmatched accuracy.”

Staring, rather than scanning, allows more rapid detection of adversarial pulses, enabling faster response and greater protection for U.S. military aircraft. The cost-efficient, digital ultra-wideband receiver (UWR) technology provides near-instant detection of signals across a wider swath of the electromagnetic spectrum, expanding capabilities to jam enemy radar. The UWR system achieves greater instantaneous bandwidth coverage over the entire electromagnetic warfare frequency range, using a single processing card, not a stack of cards required by many systems.

“It is important that the U.S. stays ahead of the advanced and emerging radars of potential combatants, while maintaining the ability to operate in ever-congested radio-frequency environments that contain a wide range of signals, from military radars to cell phones, TV and radio signals,” said SwRI’s Finley Hicks, who is leading the UWR development team. “SwRI’s powerful UWR technology is a long-term defense and intelligence solution, capable of outperforming existing and future enemy radar systems, even as they increase bandwidth, agility and adaptability.”

The UWR system follows the Sensor Open System Architecture (SOSA™) Technical Standard, which means it can easily integrate into legacy and newly developed Open Architecture Weapon systems. Technology aligned to SOSA allows quick and efficient system component updates to support new capabilities without having to replace or redesign the entire system.

“This open-system-based receiver will offer the military an ultra-wideband capability that can be integrated into existing defense systems to improve situational awareness and mission effectiveness,” said Hicks.

Compared to competing systems, the UWR technology improves on size, weight, power and cost (SWaP-C) requirements, delivering an efficient design with fewer components, lower maintenance expenses and a smaller logistical footprint for deployed units.

Southwest Research Institute develops advanced military and defense electronic warfare systems for air and ground applications. For more information, visit https://www.swri.org/industry/electronics-integration-cyber-technology/advanced-electronic-warfare-solutions.

 

Illinois Tech professor’s team advances to finals of five-year, $10 million XPRIZE Rainforest competition

Matthew Spenko, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, used drones to deliver and retrieve sensor packages in the Singaporean rainforest

Grant and Award Announcement

ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

 

IMAGE: PROFESSOR MATTHEW SPENKO, SECOND FROM RIGHT, LOOKS AT TEAM WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE’S DRONE, ALONG WITH A MEMBER OF THE XPRIZE ORGANIZING TEAM, IN THE VEST, AND SEVERAL STUDENTS FROM ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. THE ILLINOIS TECH STUDENTS ARE, FROM LEFT, NAIA LUM (MMAE 4TH YEAR), PATRICK GRIDER (MMAE 4TH YEAR), ETHAN JENNSEN (MMAE 3RD YEAR), DAVID CAÑONES BONHAM (MMAE PH.D. STUDENT), PATRICK DUNNE (MMAE 4TH YEAR), AND KHANG PHAM (MMAE 3RD YEAR), LOOKING AWAY FROM CAMERA. view more 

CREDIT: CAT KUTZ/XPRIZE

CHICAGO—July 25, 2023—Matthew Spenko, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology, is leading his team, Welcome to the Jungle, into the finals of the prestigious XPRIZE Rainforest competition—a global five-year, $10 million contest designed to enhance our understanding of tropical rainforest ecosystems around the world. Welcome to the Jungle—composed of members from Illinois Tech, Purdue University, Natural State, and the Morton Arboretum—is one of six teams advancing to the finals, which will be held in 2024.

“We are extremely excited to be part of the XPRIZE Rainforest competition finals. The semifinal field trials in Singapore showed us how difficult this challenge is, and we’re ready to implement everything we learned there into our approach for the finals,” says Spenko, whose team was one of 13 semifinalists. “We also got a glimpse at how impressive the competition is and are looking forward to seeing more next year.”

The team’s innovative approach involves delivering and retrieving sensor packages to the rainforest and 3D mapping the rainforest seamlessly using drones. These sensors are designed to identify species, particularly birds, from audio and visual data. Spenko’s partners at Purdue University, led by Professor Jinha Jung, took the lead on aerial surveying to measure vegetation, quantify tree species’ diversity and determine potential sensor deployment locations.

“Working collaboratively, our team has been able to obtain crucial insights about the health and biodiversity of the rainforest,” says Jung, assistant professor of civil engineering and a member of Purdue’s digital forestry initiative. “Our joint efforts illustrate the power of inter-university collaboration in addressing critical environmental challenges.”

Under the guidance of Spenko, the project has been a tremendous opportunity for experiential learning, with about 60 undergraduate students contributing to the project, including six who went to Singapore. “It’s just a lot of fun to be able to work with students on this,” Spenko says. “There’s great satisfaction getting to see the next generation of engineers working on important societal problems.”

The significant student involvement embodies Illinois Tech’s commitment to learning by doing, and Spenko hopes to bring undergraduate students to the finals as well.

“Participation in the XPRIZE Rainforest competition presents an unmatched experiential-learning opportunity for our students,” says Kevin Cassel, interim dean of Armour College of Engineering. “In addition to developing technical solutions in support of the environment, the team is seeing their hard work and innovative thinking recognized on a global platform, which is immensely gratifying and speaks volumes about the quality of engineering education at Illinois Tech, as well as the talent and commitment of our faculty.” 

Illinois Tech alumnus Jim Albrecht (FE ’53, M.S. ’55) sponsored Welcome to the Jungle’s airfare and accommodations for the semifinals. 

Incentivizing teams to innovate rapid and autonomous technology to expedite the monitoring of biodiversity and data collection, XPRIZE Rainforest aims to allow researchers to gain near real-time insights about the health and well-being of rainforests that can more immediately inform conservation action and policy, support sustainable bioeconomies and empower Indigenous peoples and local communities around the world.

“We cannot effectively protect what we cannot accurately measure and understand,” said Peter Houlihan, Executive Vice President, Biodiversity and Conservation, XPRIZE. “I’m extremely encouraged by the advancements these teams have made to develop new, more rapid ways of measuring biodiversity that can improve conservation efforts worldwide. We look forward to seeing how they further refine their approaches during finals testing.” 

The winning team will survey the most biodiversity contained in 100 hectares of tropical rainforest in 24 hours and produce the most impactful real-time insights within 48 hours. Learn more at xprize.org/rainforest.

 

Dynamic pricing superior to organic waste bans in preventing climate change

Study from UC San Diego’s Rady School of Management suggests grocers that discount food nearing expiration could reduce the amount of food waste that contributes to GHG emissions

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN DIEGO

 

IMAGE: ROBERT SANDERS, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF MARKETING AND ANALYTICS AT THE RADY SCHOOL. SANDERS ESTIMATED FOOD WASTE AND INVENTORIES INDIRECTLY USING THE SHELF LIVES, SALES DATA AND PRODUCTION PROCESS KNOWLEDGE GAINED FROM INTERVIEWS WITH GROCERY STORE EMPLOYEES. CREDIT: UC SAN DIEGO'S RADY SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT. view more 

CREDIT: UC SAN DIEGO'S RADY SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT

While composting and organic waste ban policies are gaining popularity across the United States, a new study from the University of California San Diego’s Rady School of Management finds dynamic pricing could be the most effective way for grocery chains to keep perishables out of landfills, reducing food waste by 21% or more.

During decomposition, organic waste releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Globally, food waste releases up to 10% of worldwide annual greenhouse gas emissions, which has caught the attention of lawmakers working to slow global warming. Last year, California rolled out a residential composting program and the state’s legislature recently introduced a bill to reign in “sell by” dates from manufactures, which prompts consumers to needlessly throw out food.

More than 10 percent of food waste comes from grocery retailers that throw out surplus perishables past their expiration date. The Rady School of Management study, to be published in Marketing Science, evaluates two of the most popular programs targeted at businesses and residents to divert waste from landfills: organic waste bans, which have been introduced in nine U.S. states including California and dynamic pricing, which is more popular outside the U.S.

The organic waste ban in California, for example, requires businesses generating at least two cubic yards of waste to recycle their organic waste by composting or donation. Aside from diverting waste away from landfills, policymakers hope that the higher disposal costs incentivize business to directly reduce waste—rather than just divert it away from landfills—much like a waste tax would do.

Dynamic pricing, on the other hand, spurs retailers to throw less food out to begin with by applying an algorithm that determines when grocery stores should reduce the price of perishables depending on their inventory and expiration date. With dynamic pricing, vendors can change the price of food multiple times a day, compared to static pricing in which products have the same price all day, typically from the moment they arrive on the shelf until they expire.

Dynamic pricing reduces food waste and makes healthy food more affordable

“Oddly enough, fewer than 25% of U.S. grocery retailers offer any kind of dynamic pricing at all, while most hotels and airlines will discount rooms and seats when they have a surplus,” said the paper’s author, Robert Sanders, an assistant professor of marketing and analytics at the Rady School. “However, this research shows that the increased price flexibility of discounting food that is about to expire significantly reduces food waste and increases profit margins among retailers.”

Sanders’ analysis shows that dynamic pricing reduces waste by 21% on average while increasing grocery chains' gross margins by 3%. In contrast, an organic waste ban, even if it increased the cost of sending perishables to a landfill by ten times the amount it does today, reduces waste by only 4% and decreases gross margins about 1%.

“If regulators want to directly reduce grocery-store waste, they should incentivize grocery chains to adopt dynamic pricing over imposing organic waste bans or waste taxes,” Sanders said. “It is also a market-based solution that the retailers themselves could implement.”

An added benefit of dynamic pricing is that it makes perishables, which are less processed and generally healthier, more affordable, slightly benefiting consumers overall. On the other hand, organic waste bans slightly harm consumers by reducing retailers’ inventories, which can lead to stockouts.

Grocers create food waste because it is profitable to do so  

The paper’s analysis of dynamic pricing is based on a structural economic model that characterizes a grocery retailer’s behavior, as grocers have to decide how much product to order before they know how much will sell prior to hitting its expiration date. To test the predictions of the model, Sanders used data from the artisanal bread category of Pick ’n Save, a large Midwestern grocery chain.

The dataset includes product prices, quantities, product production costs, shelf lives and consumer arrivals timestamped to the nearest minute. Sanders estimated waste and inventories indirectly using the shelf lives, sales data and production process knowledge gained from interviews with store employees. Using these data sets, his descriptive analysis shows that the retailer generates high waste because it is profitable to do so: when gross profit margins are higher, the retailer stocks its shelves more fully to make sure it doesn’t miss out on sales, but as a result, waste increases.

Sanders then compared the impacts of dynamic pricing, if it were to be implemented across the Pick ’n Save grocery chain in the bread category, to those of static pricing for the same category in all 97 Pick ’n Save stores with a bakery.

“The results show that if a self-interested, profit-maximizing grocery retailer adopted dynamic pricing, they could end up benefiting its own profits, its customers and society more broadly by changing its prices so that they dynamically reflect the time-varying opportunity costs of perishables,” Sanders said.  

The model’s data was then compared to another economic model that assessed the impacts of waste bans for Pick ’n Save’s bread category—if the bans increased the price of sending organic waste to a landfill from the current cost of $32 per ton of organic waste to $320 per ton (equivalent to a tenfold increase in disposal costs).  

Sanders increased the cost of disposing waste in the model to explore the relationship between disposal costs and the amount of waste generated.

“I find waste is very inelastic with respect to the disposal cost,” he said. “Even if we dial up the disposal costs tenfold, which is unlikely and on the extreme end, we still don’t see the waste reduction that policymakers might hope for.”   

He added, “Of course, waste bans could still be helpful if businesses comply and divert waste from the landfills, but the best and first thing to do is reduce the overall amount of waste generated to begin with. Dynamic pricing would likely lead to much larger reductions in retailer food waste.”

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JOURNAL

Marketing Science

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Dynamic Pricing and Organic Waste Bans: A Study of Grocery Retailers' Incentives to Reduce Food Waste

 

UCF researcher leads $3.3 million project to develop floating offshore wind turbine simulators

The simulation software will improve the design of floating offshore wind turbines and help increase their use as a renewable energy source

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA

ORLANDO, July 25, 2023- A University of Central Florida engineering professor is leading a $3.3 million project funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to research floating offshore wind turbines.

“My goal is to model floating offshore wind turbines and use the model to explore design improvements while concurrently investigating new ideas for control and sensing, a concept that is termed Control Co-Design,” says Tuhin Das, the project’s principal investigator and a professor in UCF’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

He is working to build a software that simulates effects of external phenomena, such as waves crashing and changing winds, on the floating platform and the turbine system. 

Floating offshore wind turbines are designed to diversify the repertoire of energy resources available in the U.S. and help increase the contribution of renewable energy to power grids whose energy demands are steadily increasing.

Das began the work in 2020 with phase one of the project. His initial funding was $772,000. The researcher’s project recently received a boost with a new $3.3 million grant from ARPA-e to continue the research in phase two for the next three years.

“In phase one, our job was to show the kind of benefits we can bring to the modeling and simulation sector,” Das says. “We showed that our results were at par with industry-accepted models and experimental data.”

Das’ software platform will become a product that can be hosted on a university web page and be licensed or commercialized, he says.

“We want this product to be mature enough so that at the end of the next three years, researchers from the industry and academia would be able to use this for advancing research in wind turbines,” Das says.

To date, very few floating offshore wind-turbine farms are in operation, with the first one located off the coast of Scotland.

Das says he hopes that renewable energy companies can use his software to develop their own technology innovations and create more offshore wind turbines.

The research was proposed in 2019 to develop a simulation software that facilitates concurrent design and control of floating offshore wind turbines, ultimately leading to a wider adoption of this technology.

Das says, since then, the software, which uses acausal modeling as the foundational principle, has had rapid growth and has matured in its predictive capability. 

“Acausal modeling takes a declarative approach to modeling governing equations, rather than the conventional approach of using assignment statements,” Das says. “Here, the causality is unspecified and determined only during simulation.”

He says the approach is well-suited for modeling physical systems since the resulting models represent the physical structure of the modeled system closely.

“It leads to better reusability of models as compared to those containing assignment statements,” Das says.

A feature of acausal modeling is bidirectional data flow between the ports of connected component models, he says.

In phase one, Das collaborated with researchers at the University of Maine who have been generating experimental data for the project and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory who have collaborated in validating the software.

Das' team at UCF currently consists of multiple UCF graduate students and one postdoctoral research scholar.

“We are planning to work extremely hard the next few years, with some increase in student involvement, and by involving professionals that are well versed with software development,” Das says.

Das earned his doctorate and master’s degrees, both in mechanical engineering, from Michigan State University. He joined UCF’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, part of the College of Engineering and Computer Science, in 2011.

Writer: Beatriz Nina Ribeiro Oliveira, UCF Office of Research