How can you reduce your emissions while growing your business? One way to do this is opting for low carbon logistics.
Christmas is over. Now the shops are full of Easter eggs. The machine that is ecommerce still turns over inexorably. With the growth in ecommerce, delivery volumes are rising daily and with them the carbon emissions that come with transport.
Between 10 and 14 million parcels are delivered daily here in the UK (Ofcom). Individual drivers handle between 40 and 120 parcels a day.
Low carbon logistics aim to reduce carbon emissions across transport, warehousing, packaging and delivery – the last mile. They aim to bring fuel savings, compliance with climate policies (like Ulez) and customer demand for greener delivery options.
If you’re a small business, does any of this apply to you? Yes, it does. Whatever the size of your business, if you despatch products for delivery or receive goods inwards, you’ll want to consider the carbon emissions of these business activities.
Most carbon emissions are caused by line-haul transport, that last mile of delivery, warehouse energy use and packaging. That last mile is typically high cost in terms of fuel use, sitting in heavy traffic in urban areas. Carbon emissions are particularly high in cities. Here transporting goods causes congestion, and affects air quality.
While a long haul truck can emit 84-103 g CO₂e per tonne-mile, a last mile delivery might emit 181g of CO₂e per mile (Commercial Vehicle / Vanarama). The more parcels the delivery man delivers, the less the carbon emissions. It is still likely to be less than driving to collect a product from a store.
So smarter transport routing matters, so that the delivery driver has the maximum number of parcels to deliver on a route. And delivery by rail or water is preferable to driving long haul on trunk routes. And delivery in cleaner vehicles, like electric vans or cars or bikes can significantly reduce the carbon emissions of that last mile.
That’s why the Royal Mail claims the lowest carbon emissions per parcel in the UK. They have invested in smart technology to maximise deliveries and an extensive fleet of electric vehicles. They use biofuels in larger transport vehicles and they’ve also shifted from air to road/ferry transport. Plus half of postal workers deliver in local areas on foot.
At the same time, how you or your supplier packages products for delivery matters. Energy efficient lighting and renewable energy options can reduce the energy consumption and the carbon emissions of workshops and warehouses. Making sure that the package is as small as it is practical to be and as lightweight as possible – using recyclable or reusable packaging cuts both material use, transport emissions and your cost to send the item.
As with all measures to reduce carbon emissions, the first step is to measure the existing footprint and record it as a baseline. Then targets can be set for reducing the emissions of your delivery services and goods inwards. Reporting brings transparency for your customers to see how you are improving your products and services.
Getting started with measuring, reporting and reducing carbon emissions is included in the Blue Patch Carbon Reduction course, so if you are unsure where to start, take advantage of our free training for all our community members and join today.
Low carbon logistics are not just nice to have. Those that move early will be in a good position when any legislation comes in, and they’ll have an additional selling point for customers, plus it may save on delivery costs in the longer term.
