Companies increasingly say sustainability matters to long-term business success. But the 2026 State of Supply Chain Sustainability report finds a gap between that commitment and the structures, measurements, and resilience needed to put it into practice.
Strong commitment meets unstable conditions
The report, from the MIT Sustainable Supply Chain Lab, surveyed 1,810 supply chain professionals across 91 countries. A record 83 percent rate sustainability as important or very important to long-term business success, the highest level in the report’s seven-year history.
Recent pressures have not erased that support. Fifty-nine percent say they became more committed to sustainability after U.S. policy shifts that deprioritize environmental concerns. Yet 68 percent say tariff uncertainty has forced them to delay, reduce, or abandon sustainability strategies. Nearly one-third report that tariff-related disruptions increased their operational emissions.
Geopolitical conflict presents another obstacle. More than eight in 10 respondents across North America, Europe, and Asia say ongoing conflict is reducing the effectiveness of their organization’s climate action. Plans built around stable trade and relative peace are harder to carry out when those conditions do not hold.
Governance determines whether goals shape decisions
Disruption can expose weaknesses inside a company as well as outside it. Among companies with public sustainability goals, just 51 percent have a formal cross-functional sustainability team, and 33 percent put sustainability oversight at the board level. The report identifies cross-functional teams as the governance structure most strongly associated with bringing sustainability into everyday decisions.
The difference shows up in reported practice. At companies with formal teams, sustainability is “frequently or always” built into decisions 57 percent of the time. Where responsibility rests with a single function, that figure is 13 percent. The report describes this 44-point gap as evidence of the value of governance investment.
Sustainability is most integrated into routine operating choices, including transportation and logistics (39 percent), procurement (35 percent), warehousing (34 percent), and product design (33 percent). It is less embedded in choices with longer-term emissions consequences, such as capital investment, network design, and supply chain risk planning. Companies may improve how they run current operations without yet designing lower-emission supply chains for the future.
AI can help operations, but measurement matters
Artificial intelligence is becoming part of sustainability work, particularly in North America, where 78 percent of organizations report current use. Among adopters, 87 percent report a positive impact on sustainability goals. Reported uses and outcomes include reduced material waste (86 percent), lower energy use (81 percent), and estimating missing supplier emissions data (63 percent).
Those gains do not guarantee lower total emissions. Among mature agentic AI users, 53 percent report a reduction in total greenhouse gas emissions, while 29 percent report an increase. The findings suggest that making a process more efficient does not by itself ensure that its overall emissions fall.
Warehousing makes the measurement gap visible. Among advanced and fully automated warehouses using AI, 78 percent report higher energy use since implementation and 76 percent report higher waste. Only 24 percent use AI-driven real-time monitoring to track environmental consequences. Without monitoring, organizations may not see those effects until well after a system is in place.
Freight and supplier partnerships show different paths
Freight companies are using route optimization, load consolidation, and driver-behavior programs to reduce emissions. Still, 43 percent of fleets operate mostly or entirely on conventional diesel, and only 8 percent have completed a full transition to low-emission energy.
Reported policy effects differ by region. In Europe, 84 percent of freight companies say recent policy changes positively affected their decarbonization strategy; in North America, 44 percent say the same. Battery-electric vehicles are at scale in 60 percent of European companies and 36 percent of North American companies. The report links unclear policy signals with delays to capital-intensive technology transitions.
Supplier collaboration offers a more encouraging signal for Scope 3, or indirect, emissions. Participation in joint supplier engagement and decarbonization programs rose from 31 to 58 percent in a single year. Partnerships to manage shared suppliers’ emissions more than doubled, from 23 to 55 percent, while the share working entirely alone fell from 18 to 6 percent.
Together, the findings point to a practical challenge: turning stated ambition into accountable decisions that can withstand external disruption. Cross-functional governance, measurement of technology’s full effects, and cooperation on shared supplier emissions can help make sustainability part of how supply chains are planned and operated.