Dear participant,  

My name is Maria Chaudhry and I am a PhD student at the University of Technology Sydney. I'm currently working in the domain of Fresh Produce Logistic Businesses - Problems, Solutions and Green Practices. My research theme specifically entails Enabling Sustainable Logistics for Fresh Produce SMEs (Small to Medium Enterprises).  I'm currently visiting a number of fresh produce markets across Australia to explore different sustainability practices in-action or planned for future, talking to the small-scale farmers and business owners in order to understand their problems and how we can make it convenient for them to carry out their daily operations including transportation from farms / warehouses, orders management, packaging and waste management. I am conducting a survey for the same, with ethical approval obtained from my institution as well. I would love to collaborate with you in this regard, because of our mutual focus of concerns: Sustainability, Fresh Produce Safety and Helping Small Businesses to Grow."  

As an important stakeholder of my research domain, I would welcome your assistance.  The research will involve a questionnaire to fill up and should take no more than 10 to 15 minutes of your time.  I have requested you to participate because your feedback would be quite valuable as one of the primary stakeholders of this research, directly. The feedback from a number of SMEs is very important in this regard, in order to have an in-depth analysis of the problems they are facing in going green. We hope that this research can help deduce a minimal set of ‘go-green variables’ and would prove to be an initial step towards developing a go-green charter for SMEs. Involving feedbacks from private or government agencies under which SMEs operate and the clients of SMEs, Small Scale farmers / Fresh Produce Entrepreneurs, all can be a fruitful part for this research process in one way or another and your expertise do adhere to that.  

If you are interested in participating, I would be glad if you would contact me or my supervisor (Maria Chaudhry, Dr. Faezeh Karimi) at (Maria.Chaudhry@student.uts.edu.au, Faezeh.Karimi@uts.edu.au)  

You are under no obligation to participate in this research. But we would really appreciate if you could kindly spare some time for your valuable feedback, that in turn could really help to build up better solutions for industry and community as well.  

Following is the link to the survey: 

https://redcap.research.uts.edu.au/surveys/?s=3YP94MHATJHT7NTM 

 Yours sincerely, 

Maria Chaudhry 

(Maria.Chaudhry@student.uts.edu.au)  

NOTE:   This study has been approved by the University of Technology, Sydney Human Research Ethics Committee.  If you have any complaints or reservations about any aspect of your participation in this research which you cannot resolve with the researcher, you may contact the Ethics Committee through the Research Ethics Officer (ph: +61 2 9514 2478 Research.Ethics@uts.edu.au), and quote the UTS HREC reference number.  Any complaint you make will be treated in confidence and investigated fully and you will be informed of the outcome.