School of Sustainability Graduate Culminating Experiences
Student capstone and applied projects from ASU's School of Sustainability.
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- All Subjects: Global Supply Chain
A Case for Co-Ops (AC4CO) is a digital media outreach project that is intended to explore methods for increasing the impact of sustainability solutions, by helping to translate research implications into practical approaches for sustainable business design. The goal for this project is to increase public awareness regarding latent sustainability benefits offered by the proliferation of worker-owned social enterprises. In effort to achieve this goal, AC4CO pulls together a collection of information and resources regarding the design of worker-owned business models that implement social and environmental safeguards. This collated outreach material is hosted on a dedicated website, which decentralizes solutions by making educational material accessible to a diverse audience. Notably, AC4CO features edits from exclusive one-on-one interviews with leading academic scholars from the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at ASU, who share their expert understanding of various sustainable business practices. Each expert offers insight into an integral piece within the constellation of considerations that are involved in the design of sustainable social enterprise models – from procurement policies to waste reduction strategies. Parallel to these interviews, AC4CO also showcases the design process for an emerging, sustainable worker cooperative, by highlighting the incubation of a local beverage business called Together We Brew. This incubation process was directed by fellow sustainability solutions graduate student, Nick Shivka, in collaboration with his ASU project partners, on behalf of their incubator program’s pilot cohort of worker-owner recruits. Weaving these aspects, AC4CO’s video components synthesize fundamental research-based knowledge of solution strategies into plainly spoken dialogue and augments the discussion with tangibility that is delivered through a visual narrative. This narrative lends plausibility to the task of designing business solution strategies, by providing viewers a look into the process as peers work together to figure out how to structure a cooperative business model that can present viable economic opportunity, while also promoting social equity and environmental protection. By stripping away scientific research jargon and simultaneously presenting a visual rendering of a theory of change, AC4CO’s approach frames the content of the video components in a way that enables an inclusive vision to be shared with a broad working-class audience. This method is intended to foster popular appeal, by distilling complex and varying issues into concise key points, while following a clear and coherent storytelling strategy for sustainability solutions. Functioning as a call to action, these video components serve a critical role in the overall digital media outreach project by piquing the curiosity of viewers and inspiring them to engage with the website to learn more. In doing so, the video components support the website’s central mission of providing a consolidated anthology of educational and resource tools, as a strategy for encouraging workers to join the movement by creating new sustainable and worker-owned social enterprises around the United States.
The production and consumption of goods is a global phenomenon that has significant social and environmental impacts and challenges. In 2016, the International Labor Organization (ILO) estimated that 25 million people were victims of forced labor. Forced labor is defined as “work that is involuntary and subject to penalty.” It is a subset of modern slavery, and is a complex problem that affects all three pillars of sustainability. Fair labor, on the other hand, is voluntary, requires fair compensation, and is free from penalty. With one in five jobs tied to global supply chains, it is vital that companies and organizations are committed to sustainability within the supply chain (Thorlakson et al., 2018). One critical aspect of this commitment includes a focus on fair labor practices.
ASU’s Trademark Licensing Department currently utilizes third-party vendors to verify that any licensed product, those marked with an ASU logo or trademark, have been sourced and produced under fair labor conditions. Our project focuses on steps that can be taken to elevate fair labor practices across the ASU supply chain for both licensed and unlicensed products. The Fair Labor Solutions Team has developed two primary deliverables: an overarching report and a fair labor problem identification presentation with a script to act as an education tool for ASU staff. The report contains the following elements: a landscape analysis of fair labor, ASU’s current procurement practices, a collection of exemplary case studies, and a tiered vision towards transformational change. Our team understands that ensuring fair labor throughout the ASU supply chain is not a linear process. The goal of our deliverables is to offer a strong foundation for the university's transition to sustainable procurement.
Sustainable purchasing is the integration of sustainability criteria into procurement processes and decisions. A critical element of this is ensuring fair labor practices such as safe working conditions, appropriate pay for work, and the absence of forced labor and child labor. Enforcing fair labor standards throughout the supply chain is challenging. Working directly with the final vendor is not enough as finished products involve multiple inputs and activities from extraction to end use and many associated suppliers. Unfair and forced labor practices are especially prevalent in countries with poor labor laws and lack of enforcement. Reporting and verifying labor practices for these suppliers can be time-consuming and expensive. Moreover, ensuring that a final vendor's products and services observe sustainability standards does not mean that all the suppliers involved in product creation steps observe fair and equitable labor practices. Third-party certifications are helpful, but not always accurate. ASU wishes to (1) strengthen its purchasing practices to increase assurances that sourced products follow fair labor practices across the supply chain of vendors and suppliers, and (2) create scalable solutions that can be implemented at other universities.
Sustainable purchasing is the integration of sustainability criteria into procurement processes and decisions. A critical element of this is ensuring fair labor practices such as safe working conditions, appropriate pay for work, and the absence of forced labor and child labor. Enforcing fair labor standards throughout the supply chain is challenging. Working directly with the final vendor is not enough as finished products involve multiple inputs and activities from extraction to end use and many associated suppliers. Unfair and forced labor practices are especially prevalent in countries with poor labor laws and lack of enforcement. Reporting and verifying labor practices for these suppliers can be time-consuming and expensive. Moreover, ensuring that a final vendor's products and services observe sustainability standards does not mean that all the suppliers involved in product creation steps observe fair and equitable labor practices. Third-party certifications are helpful, but not always accurate. ASU wishes to (1) strengthen its purchasing practices to increase assurances that sourced products follow fair labor practices across the supply chain of vendors and suppliers, and (2) create scalable solutions that can be implemented at other universities.
Sustainable purchasing is the integration of sustainability criteria into procurement processes and decisions. A critical element of this is ensuring fair labor practices such as safe working conditions, appropriate pay for work, and the absence of forced labor and child labor. Enforcing fair labor standards throughout the supply chain is challenging. Working directly with the final vendor is not enough as finished products involve multiple inputs and activities from extraction to end use and many associated suppliers. Unfair and forced labor practices are especially prevalent in countries with poor labor laws and lack of enforcement. Reporting and verifying labor practices for these suppliers can be time-consuming and expensive. Moreover, ensuring that a final vendor's products and services observe sustainability standards does not mean that all the suppliers involved in product creation steps observe fair and equitable labor practices. Third-party certifications are helpful, but not always accurate. ASU wishes to (1) strengthen its purchasing practices to increase assurances that sourced products follow fair labor practices across the supply chain of vendors and suppliers, and (2) create scalable solutions that can be implemented at other universities.