Misc. bits

1. Pollution Prevention and OR. It was last updated over 10 years ago, but the NPPC IE/OR Resource List web page has a good collection of references. The page heading says pollution prevention, but many of the references are on other environmental topics. Some are from the OR literature (including EJOR, Operations Research, and OR/MS Today) while others are from more general sources. Likely worth following up on. Housed at the University of Michigan, the NPPC appears to have been superseded by the Center for Sustainable Systems (CSS). The CSS has an extensive website. It has an industrial ecology emphasis but also appears to be highly interdisciplinary, including connections to the OR realm. If you’ve ever gotten a Stonyfield Farm yogurt and wondered how they decided to ditch the plastic cap, apparently CSS was behind it (see image below). See their “Accomplishments” brochure (pdf) for a quick run-down of what they’ve done.

2. OR50 Program. The program for OR50 is up and may be worth scanning as it contains some sustainability talks including a few on wind power and
an OR-Sustainability debate (see this earlier post).

3. INFORMS is a “Green Publisher”
From an INFORMS email:

INFORMS is classified as a “green publisher” with Sherpa-Romeo, a source of information for publishers’ policies on self-archiving and posting papers electronically. Sherpa-Romeo classifies a publisher as “green,” indicating that the publisher permits authors to self-archive their accepted papers on their personal or institution’s website in preprint and postprint…

That’s nice. Here’s a related post about Springer open access on Michael Trick’s OR blog.

Green Building Performance. Reuse vs Recycle.

Another talk for the quantitatively-inclined at the recent US Federal Environmental Symposium East was “Results of LEED Building Energy Performance Study” by Brendan Owens of the US Green Building Council (USGBC). LEED is a rating system for buildings in terms of their environmental impact administered by the USGBC. A building can earn points within the system for energy and resource efficiency, use of renewable materials, recycling, diversion of construction waste from landfill, etc.

The talk concerned an interesting study commissioned by the USGBC and completed by the New Building Institute. The key question was how did buildings that received LEED certification when they were completed, perform once they were in operation. 121 certified buildings, representing 22% of the total number, participated in the study. (Note: these were the ones who responded to an invitation, sent to all, to participate in the study, and so do not form a random sample.) The results were that in general, LEED buildings were 25-30% more energy efficient than non-LEED buildings. The data were pretty variable and unpredictable (e.g. some very highly rated buildings performed near the bottom). It seemed like some of the variability could have been mitigated by controlling for building type within the study. Buildings serve different functions. A data center is going to have a different energy use profile than an office building. The results are being used to shape the next version of the LEED rating system. The study is available here.

All told, the symposium showcased many good initiatives and programs. One thing that seemed to be lacking, however, was something along the lines of the cradle-to-cradle viewpoint, with a more critical take on recycling, for instance, and more emphasis on avoiding many of these problems at the outset by more thoughtful design and reuse. There was some evidence of this, as in a different USPS talk about how the amount of hazardous materials they generate has been cut by 90% through green purchasing. But in other cases, recycling programs and green electronics purchases were trumpeted with far less said about reusable over recycled items (such as bottles) and upgrading equipment versus purchasing new environmentally-friendly equipment (like computers). Nevertheless, many steps in the right direction are being taken.

Federal Environmental Symposium, including Green OR at the USPS

I attended the US Federal Environmental Symposium East in Bethesda, MD last week. This meeting brought together US government agency representatives to discuss programs, plans, analysis, etc. each has been undertaking surrounding sustainability issues. I heard some good talks from members of the Departments of Energy, Agriculture, Defense, and the Environmental Protection Agency, Office of the Federal Environmental Executive (OFEE), National Institutes of Health (the symposium host), and many others. The conference had a strong policy slant; a key focus was how to meet the sustainability goals of Executive Order 13423. (Scroll all the way down for more on E.O. 13423.)

One talk having some good OR/MS content was “U.S. Postal Service Environmental Impact from Reductions in Highway Transportation: Highway Corridor Analytic Program (HCAP)” by Edward (EJ) Matto of IBM and Wayne Corey from the US Postal Service. The talk was about an optimization model geared towards minimizing the cost of the long-haul (think inter-city) postal runs. Previously these trucks were only 60% full on average, so overhauling the routes to produce fuller trucks would lead to fewer runs, hence lower costs. The problem is modeled as a vehicle-routing problem with pickups and deliveries (VRP/PD) using mixed-integer programming. The results have helped save the USPS $5 million annually.

EJ Matto was kind enough to take a number of questions from me after the talk, despite my question about junk mail (see below) during the regular Q & A. One of the interesting (and possibly familiar to some) points he made was that the USPS only implemented a small fraction of the routes suggested by the model. In part this was because doing more would lead to too large of a disruption of the current system. The model results led to incremental changes in the routing, not a wholesale revision of it. Along the same lines, the model starts with existing routes and some potential new ones (generated by heuristics), rather than starting from scratch.

This topic seemed familiar to me, and it turns out a paper on this was published in Interfaces (Pajunas, Matto, Trick, and Zuluaga, “Optimizing Highway Transportation at the United States Postal Service”, Vol 37(6), Nov-Dec 2007). See that for more information about the model. One difference between the paper and the talk was a slide on the environmental benefits of implementation of the results, such as reduced emissions of CO2, NOx, CO, VOCs, PM10 (particulate matters). This registered with the audience. It has probably often been the case that implementation of a good cost-saving OR model has led to environmental side benefits. Fewer miles driven translates to less fuel used, and less pollution. But of course, “efficiency” does not always benefit the environment, especially when environmental capital is not accounted for. Central to the corporate social responsibility movement is the notion of “internalizing the externalities”. The criticism that has often been waged is that pollution, natural resource depletion, and the like traditionally have not been accounted for properly in the cost of doing business. They are treated as externalities. This appears to be changing somewhat nowadays.

As I alluded to above, I asked about the USPS’s view of junk mail given its environmental impact but figuring it was a huge source of income. I received a very lengthy answer from the USPS speaker along with another audience member who also works there. They talked about how the USPS works with direct mailers to reduce the environmental footprint of the “bulk business mail” (that’s the term they use), which makes up 87% of their revenue. They also described a number of sustainability initiatives the USPS is taking on, one of which is cradle-to-cradle certification (see “USPS Goes Cradle to Cradle” at treehugger.com).

Most forms of doing business are going to take a toll on the environment, even ones like the USPS that don’t directly involve manufacturing. It is a problem many companies have to face as they strive to be more environmentally responsible. So what many do is to try to mitigate the impacts of an inherently environmentally deleterious business, and also work hard to be greener in other ways, such as with recycling, alternative fuel vehicles, energy efficiency, etc.

To see more about the efforts of the USPS, go to their greener choices page. (Follow the links on the page to reduce the amount of “bulk business mail” you receive.)

The Center for a New American Dream website has information about a “Do Not Junk” registry patterned after the “Do Not Call” one and also has steps you can take to reduce your own junk mail.

Getting back to Executive Order 13423, from the OFEE site:

On January 24th, 2007, President George W. Bush signed Executive Order 13423, “Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management.” The order sets goals in the areas of energy efficiency, acquisition, renewable energy, toxics reductions, recycling, sustainable buildings, electronics stewardship, fleets, and water conservation.

Some of the goals include:

VEHICLES: Increase purchase of alternative fuel, hybrid, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles when commercially available.

ENERGY EFFICIENCY: Reduce energy intensity by 3 % annually through 2015 or by 30% by 2015.

GREENHOUSE GASES: By reducing energy intensity by 3% annually or 30% by 2015, reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

(src: E.O. 13423 Fact Sheet (pdf))

Update: A June 25 Washington Post story discusses US Presidential candidates’ energy/environment plans and also refers to EO 13423.

Green Planning and the DNC

One of the goals of planners of the upcoming US Democratic National Convention in Denver is to make it a green convention. Among the many operational challenges are energy- and environment-related ones such as minimizing carbon emissions from buses, determining the number of bicycles to have on hand, and how to organize volunteers.

An article in the February 2008 issue of ORMS Today, “Preparing for the Democratic Convention”, talks about these and other of the planning challenges the Convention faces. It mentions that a project-based class at University of Colorado Denver (UCD) led by Harvey Greenberg will be working to find solutions to some of these problems. The course has a website that includes some of the works in progress. For instance, the bike program, which appears to be a kind of ride share, is modeled as an inventory management problem. The goal is to minimize the cost of transferring bikes while meeting bike demand at each location. A final report on the various projects is slated for the May issue.
Update: The final results are available from the link above.

Some related info:

- The 2004 Republican National Convention in New York had several green features. Read more about that here.

- For more on ride share programs, see this article from carectomy.com.

- The ORMS Today issue mentioned above has articles on community-based OR and OR applied to human rights. It also describes plans for special sessions at the 2008 INFORMS meeting on topics of societal importance. For more on community-based OR, see this informative Punk RockOR post.

MCDM talks

The 2008 Multiple Criteria Decision Making conference (mentioned in this earlier post) occurred. The following talks are relevant to green OR (please send any comments on them if you attended/presented one of these):

Decision support systems based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) for integrated municipal solid waste (MSW) management under uncertainty
B. Bieda

Evaluation of the significant renewable energy resources in India using analytical hierarchy process
A. Bensely

A multiple criteria evaluation approach on the applicability of fuel cell technology alternatives for merchant ships in maritime transportation industry
M. Celik

Analysis of critical evaluation factors of alternative fuel vehicles using
G.H. Tzeng

A multicriteria model for measuring sustainable development
A. Boggia

Application of DEMATEL in economic development issues
M. Khalili Araghi

Designing of local decision making networks towards the extension of sustainable development (Hable-Rud Watershed, Iran)
M. Kazemi

On the potential of multi-objective optimisation in the design of sustainable energy systems
C. Bouvy

Steps towards a corporate evaluation system of environ-mental impacts of offshore petroleum activity
F. Wenstop

MCDM approach on selection of suitable environmental management standard for Turkish ship management companies: EMAS or ISO 14001?
Y. Ilker Topcu

Application of multiple criteria decision analysis in the New Zealand agricultural industry
E. Dooley

See the final program (pdf).

INFORMS ‘07 Sustainability Talks

The 2007 INFORMS annual meeting is Nov 4-7 in Seattle, USA. A partial listing of sustainability-related talks follows below.

If you attended or gave one of these talks, please pass along any thoughts, impressions, etc. by submitting a comment at the end of this post or send an email to or4green at yahoo dot com.

Joint Clusters: Decision Analysis, Energy, Natural Res & the Environment/ Energy
Session: Joint Session DAS/ENRE: Expert Elicitations For Energy Technology, Sunday Nov 04, 08:00 - 09:30
Talks: 
- Prospective Evaluation of Applied Energy R&D at the Department of Energy, R. Keeney, K. Jenni  
- Photovoltaic Technology Options for Addressing Climate Change: an Expert Elicitation, A. Curtright, D. Keith, G. Morgan 
- Uncertainty, Climate Change, and Advanced Solar R&D, E. Baker, J. Keisler 
- Use of Experience Curves to Estimate the Future Cost of Power Plants with CO2 Capture, S. Yeh, M. Antes, M. Berkenpas, E. Rubin

Cluster: CPT - 123-Supply Chain Optimization
Session: Supply Chain Optimization I, Monday Nov 05, 16:30 - 18:00
Talks include:
- Assessing the Maturity Level of Environmental Business Processes,
K. Cowan, R. Harmon

Cluster : CPT - 125-Sustainable Development
Session: Sustainable Development, Tuesday Nov 06, 10:00 - 11:30
Talks include:
- A Game Theoretic Model of the Market Competition Between Green and Ordinary Products, G. Hu, B. Bidanda, L. Wang
- Modeling a Two-stage Closed-loop Remanufacturing Supply Chain, I. Dogan, R. Babu Chinnam

Cluster: CPT - 031-Ethics in OR
Session: Ethics in OR, Tuesday Nov 06, 10:00 - 11:30
Talks include:
- Fuel Efficiency Model for Vehicles, A. Soni, P. Khot
- The Sustainable Supply Chain: Integrating Social Practices, A. Awaysheh & R. Klassen

Cluster: Closed-Loop Supply Chains and Sustainable Operations
Session: OR/MS and Sustainability, Tuesday Nov 06, 13:30 - 15:00
Talks:
- Energy Modeling at the Machine Level, J. Twomey, H. Liao, L. Whitman, B. Yildirim
- Determining the Environmental Effects of a Remanufacturing Strategy for an Aluminum Automotive Powertrain Part, S. Govetto (Sustainable Design and Manufacturing Group, GA Tech), B. Bras
- A Triple Bottom Line Comparison of Carpet Reclamation Strategies for Urban Regions, C. Guidry, B. Bras
- Organic Production Systems: An Emerging Operations Strategy?, L. Demeester, M. Qi, L. Van Wassenhove

Cluster : Closed-Loop Supply Chains and Sustainable Operations
Session: Quantitative Models for CLSC Design and Operation, Wednesday Nov 07, 08:00 - 09:30

Cluster:  CPT - 029-Energy
Session: Energy Industry Issues, Wednesday Nov 07, 08:00 - 09:30
Talks include:
- Cooperative Agents, Culture, and Sustainable Energy Choices, G. Daneke

Cluster : Closed-Loop Supply Chains and Sustainable Operations
Session: Effects of Take-back Legislation on Supply Chain Design and Operations, Wednesday Nov 07, 10:00 - 11:30
Talks:
- Effects on E-waste Regulation on New Product Introduction, Q. Wang, E. Plambeck 
- An Analysis of Monopolistic and Competitive Collection Schemes for Recycling, T. Boyaci, F. Toyasaki, V. Verter
- Efficient Take-back Legislation, A. Atasu, M. Sarvary, L. Van Wassenhove
- Remanufacturing Under Take-back Legislation: Cost Benefits or Potential Competition?, G. Esenduran, E. Kemahlioglu-Ziya, J. Swaminathan

Cluster: Energy, Natural Res & the Environment/ Energy
Session: Energy Under the CO2-constrained World, Wednesday Nov 07, 10:00 - 11:30
Talks:
- A Partial Plus General Equilibrium Approach to the Simulation of the Impact of EU ETS, P. Linares,…
- Optimal Energy R&D Portfolio Investments Under Carbon Tax Uncertainty, E. Shittu, E. Baker 
- Analyzing the Long-run Impact of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, Y. Chen, D. Burtraw, S. Gabriel, B. Hobbs, S. Kim, K. Palmer, A. Paul
- Modelling the Value of Windpower in an “Ontario-like” Electricity System: A MPEC Approach, S. Rogers, P. Dabrowski

Cluster: CPT - 030-Environment, Energy, and Natural
Session: Energy Issues, Wednesday Nov 07, 13:30 - 15:00
Talks include:
- Greening the Supply Chain: Improving Carbon Emissions in the Distribution of Food and Beverages, S. Cholette & K.Venkat

Cluster: CPT - 104-Reverse Supply Chains
Session: Reverse Supply Chains, Wednesday Nov 07, 15:30 - 17:00

In addition to the talks listed here, there are others on reverse supply chains, clsc, remanufacturing, etc.

Slight update: references, more EURO items

Expanded the summary of the paper “Application of multi-criteria decision making to sustainable energy planning—A review” and added a classic reference on the recycling of paper. See References.

Jumping back here, the 2006 EURO XXI meeting in Iceland, July 2-5, 2006 was themed “OR for Better Management of Sustainable Development”.

The EURO meetings are run by EURO (the European OR umbrella group). EURO has an environmental special interest group.

Some miscellaneous finds…

1. The Decision Sciences Institute’s 2007 Annual Meeting will be held in Phoenix in November. It has an MS/OR track and a new track this year on “Ethics and Sustainability”.

2. There is a Sustainability Research Initiative within the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering at Iowa State University led by Dr. Sarah Ryan and Dr. K. Jo Min. Though it is more from the engineering side, it is industrial engineering and the list of publications includes an EJOR and an OM paper.

3. Speaking of industrial engineering, work on “Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing” is being conducted at Northeastern University under the direction of Dr. Surendra M. Gupta. See this page for links to references, many using OR methods.

4. The 2007 IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment (ISEE 2007) was held in May. Not exactly OR, but there were talks on reverse logistics and eco-efficiency, with several speakers from industry. Update: The ISEE 2008 site is now up, though the 2007 site, which had the conference program, appears to have been taken down.

Conference on MCDM for Sustainable Energy and Transportation Systems

MCDM 2008 - 19th International Conference on Multiple Criteria Decision Making - MCDM for Sustainable Energy and Transportation Systems
The University of Auckland
7 - 12 January 2008, Auckland, New Zealand

The MCDM folks have their own society and the above is their conference. Their web site has an extensive bibliography of MCDM work, could be a good place to look for more OR/Sustainability overlaps including in their Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis.

INFORMS Sustainability Roundtable

INFORMS held a “Roundtable” at the Fall 2006 annual meeting that included discussions about sustainability. It’s described in this article in the June 2007 issue of OR/MS Today. Participants included Cisco, P&G, Ford, and HP.

Detailed abstracts and participant bios are available here (word doc).

One item that was mentioned frequently was the closed-loop supply chain (CLSC). A couple of examples were:
- Jo van Nunen (Rotterdam School of Management) “identified a number of examples in which European companies are using O.R. models to optimize remanufacturing and recycling supply chain segments to increase profits.”
- Cisco Systems developed an allocation model to help with life-cycle management and re-use of products. “During FY2006, Cisco recovered and processed 4,516 tons of equipment, with only 0.9 percent sent to landfill.”

(Note: Other posts here mention that CLSC’s had a special issue of Interfaces and a session at EURO 2007.)

A few other interesting items included:

- Dwight Collins (Colbridge & Company LLC) described the new field of Industrial Ecology, new Life cycle assessment tools, “how O.R. achievements over the past decade in green product and process development, lean and green OM, and remanufacturing and closed-loop supply chains fit under the broader sustainability umbrella”, and how “making sustainability a priority tends to have unanticipated benefits.”

- Proctor & Gamble used OR techniques to “determine the optimal cost structure for distribution of P&G’s Pur water filtration sachets in Africa”.

- P&G’s participant, David Dittmann suggested thinking of sustainability as a variable rather than as a constraint. Cisco’s example of re-use above brings this home.

- Scott Ellis of Hewlett Packard talked about HP examples of opportunities for OR to help address sustainability challenges, along with guidelines for applying OR to sustainability (these are listed in the OR/MS article).

In all, from the OR/MS Today article it sounds as if many good topics and examples from the intersection of OR and Sustainability came up. It would be great to hear about it in more detail than the space the OR/MS today article could provide. For instance what were the examples van Nunen (Rotterdam), Collins (Colbridge), and Ellis (HP) discussed?

Interestingly, this roundtable was held in the Fall of 2006, but coverage of it did not appear until June 2007 issue of ORMS today. The piece was not mentioned on the cover, in the contents it was only listed as Roundtable with no mention of sustainability, and it was near the end of the magazine. It is a trendy topic, and many magazines have been all over it (e.g. Consumer’s Reports, Vogue). So is INFORMS trying to avoid getting caught up in the hype, is something else at work, or is it just not too central on the radar screen?