Designing a More Efficient, More Sustainable Supply Chain

Living through the war and genocide in Rwanda when I was in my 20s brought me a very deep sense of humanity. My first contact with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) was while I was displaced, and I remember when the war was over a big convoy of white trucks came to transport us back home from where we had fled. I told my family I wanted to drive a big four-wheel-drive vehicle and distribute supplies, like the UN and other NGOs did.

I got lucky and found a job at Catholic Relief Services (CRS). My job was to distribute food to internally displaced people and manage the logistics. Although I had been studying for a degree in economics — and I eventually did go back to earn my master’s degree — there I was, a 24-year-old riding in front of four or five massive trucks and arranging for huge food distributions, and managing a network of warehouses. That’s how I got my start in logistics.

I moved on to broader management jobs with CRS in Rwanda including procurement, and later, multisectoral programs, until I left Rwanda and migrated to Australia in 1996. Later, CRS called me about working in Burkina Faso as a supply chain manager for food distribution to a very large population. When I got there with my wife and children, I started questioning my knowledge of climate, because it was so different from Rwanda, which suddenly seemed like paradise. Located in the Sahel, Burkina Faso has one short planting season; a rainy season for three months if they’re lucky. They get one shot a year, and if they miss it there is a famine the following year. That really showed me how the climate is making things very difficult for people: The Sahara desert is moving south and the Sahel band is increasing significantly, making life and livelihood more and more fragile every year.

As my family and I would travel around the West African region we saw a lot of what my kids would call “plastic bag birds” — the plastic bags that people would use to bring home their groceries. They would get thrown away after a single use and end up in communal rubbish dumps, where at times we saw donkeys and goats eating them, or they would just start blowing around and end up in the trees. Seen from a moving vehicle, they appear to be black crows in the trees that are scattered over semi-arid and otherwise barren land. That’s when I made the connection between how the weather is changing and how our consumerism is impacting the environment. All those plastic bags will stay in nature for hundreds of years, and eventually disintegrate into small pieces that enter our food chain in the form of microplastics and nanoparticles.

The other thing that amazed me was the use of plastic water bottles or, if you don’t have as much money, plastic bags filled with water. Of course, people need clean water but you drink that water in a minute and the container remains in nature or landfills for a very long time.

Questioning supply chain practices in the humanitarian sector

A portion of the food assistance that I was in charge of distributing also came packaged in polypropylene bags and plastic cans. While the bags were often reused, the excess plastic cans were often left lying around after their use, and eventually found their way into backyards and village dumping grounds. I started to realize there was something very wrong with the way humanitarian supply chains worked, and began approaching my work differently. UNHCR, and other UN and NGO entities, are filled with good people doing something to help people in need. But if in doing so we inadvertently damage the same environment they need to thrive in, then we have totally failed in our mission. What is good for our planet is also good for people: Everything is interconnected and we must consider the impact of any humanitarian actions on future generations.

I worked in many parts of the world for CRS, and one situation in particular stuck with me. In The Gambia, Guinea, Niger, and Sierra Leone we were distributing bed nets treated with insecticide to keep away mosquitos and protect people against endemic malaria. These were mass national distributions, so over one week entire countries would be reached with a bed net for each sleeping place. Every net was wrapped in a plastic container, and after distributing those bags for five to seven days in a country, the amount of burning plastic bags across the country was absolutely insane. We started worrying about the air pollution from burning those bags, and I began questioning why every net had to be individually wrapped. It turns out that in ordering each net to come individually wrapped, we were following a policy that didn’t really apply to bed nets, and I said, “There is just too much waste here.” And we were potentially creating a situation where people end up with respiratory diseases in the long run from breathing the smoking fumes and toxic gasses. The amount of waste that goes into delivering assistance is quite significant.

When I joined UNHCR in March 2021, I realized the organization was making a strong environmental push. But I don’t think they were looking carefully at supply chain management and its environmental impact specifically. We still deliver products that are wrapped in plastics, blankets that are primarily made from plastic, plastic cups and goblets, and tents and plastic tarpaulin — which can all leave behind waste. We use electronic items and batteries that eventually become hazardous waste. And we ship them all around the world, sometimes to remote locations that do not have waste management facilities in place. We still deliver partially filled containers because someone only ordered enough to fill half a container. Even the vehicles we have — we are the largest fleet in the UN — contribute to increased CO2 emissions that could be minimized.

That’s why I’m creating a supply chain strategy that is purposefully focused on reducing our environmental footprint, which is directly related to the entire UN system’s work to do the same.

Decreasing the environmental impact of UNHCR’s supply chain

One part of the strategy is a full redesign of the supply planning process and logistics network. The more efficiently we can get goods where they need to go, the more efficient it is financially and operationally — and it’s also more environmentally sustainable. Can we buy a product from a market that’s closer to where we need it, so it doesn’t have to travel so far? How much wrapping goes into the product? What transport mode do I need to use to ensure it gets there quickly while creating a minimal amount of waste and emissions? Just because we’re helping people doesn’t mean we have a license to pollute.

We also need to consider the materials we’re using. Think about what goes into making a tent or a blanket. What is the content, how does it get to the manufacturer, what damages are caused in its production? We can analyze a blanket or a tent or a cooking pot, and decide what materials and processing methods can help save the environment while we still get the product we need. Using recycled plastic — and less of it — would reduce CO2 emissions. Using unbleached cotton requires less water and creates less water pollution.

In addition, we need to look at user-friendliness, durability, repairability, and product sustainability, because our concern for the environment should be integrated in product design and shouldn’t end when we have distributed the product. We want to know someone won’t need another product quickly, and won’t dump the old one because it breaks or it doesn’t meet their needs or preferences. So if the handle on a cup is breaking too soon, we need to check that handle for quality in the future so we can extend its lifetime. Plus, we must consider how a product can be repurposed or disposed of at the end of its useful life in a way that minimizes the impact it has in the long run.

Or consider settlements. Old thinking says if there’s an emergency, you have to get there as quickly as possible with short-term, immediate needs. But there’s a realization that a typical refugee or displaced person’s settlement lasts 20 or 25 years. So you have to start building for the long term. Even when the persons of concern move on, you want to build something that’s going to either be reused in other ways or decompose naturally without leaving many plastics or rusting metals where the structures were.

Expanding the environmental mindset in UNHCR and with its partners

Design and planning are really important. We not only have to think about what’s needed now. We have to think about what’s needed after. What will happen in 10 years with this product? Will we still need it? And even if it has a usable lifetime of 10 years, what will happen to the rest of it in 15 years? You have to think about not only the life but the afterlife.

We have to look at the complete loop — that’s the whole basis of the circular economy. So we want to think about the product not just in terms of how much it costs to buy and how fast we can get it to people. I want to think about our products in a much broader life-cycle aspect. The true economic, social, and environmental cost of a product is not just the price we pay for it. It can be much higher than that.

Thinking long term while you’re responding to immediate needs is a trick that I don’t think the humanitarian world has learned yet. We like to go fast, because people’s lives are at stake. So we need to think about getting ready to go fast, which is why planning is so important. If you know your products, then when you have to go fast you go fast with knowledge.

This will probably be a very long haul. We want to be seen as resource-conscious. But it would be good if we flipped the discourse around efficiencies, so people don’t just look at financial costs and budgets. While it might cost more now to do the right thing, the long-term cost of our sustainability-conscious actions might be much, much lower than we think. It’s a mindset shift to get everyone we work with to recognize that an additional 10% cost today might ultimately cost less overall when you consider the future. First, we have to win the minds and then we can actually help save the environment while we continue to help people.