What Is Green Logistics and Why Does It Matter?

The climate crisis is taking the world to hell in a handbasket. This is making a lot of people nervous as they live in said world. A course correction is needed – but it’s impossible without everyone doing their part. For a business, this means revamping their supply chain with green logistics.

What is Green Logistics?

Green logistics is a business practice that adapts delivery systems to lower environmental impact by cutting down the carbon emissions, implementing route optimisation, increasing energy consumption efficiency, waste management and more. These goals are accomplished via economically-viable means that also increase brand prestige both among customers and employees.

What is the Purpose of Green Logistics?

The purpose of green logistics is to improve business operations and the company’s sustainability by using eco-friendly technologies. This means that the replacements of the traditional methods and machines are better in and of themselves while also boosting environmental sustainability.

What Are the Differences between Green Logistics and Traditional Logistics?

If green logistics are the new thing, what does it seek to replace? Traditional logistics, of course. They have a few key differences:

1. Traditional logistics is only concerned with the price of energy. But in green logistics, it’s also important to measure carbon emissions and find ways to lower them.
2. In traditional processes, waste disposal is merely a question of where to put the trash. The green alternative works to minimise trash in the first place – maybe even by reusing packaging.
3. Traditional strategies only care about supply chain management is as much as it has to work. But in sustainable logistics, it’s a critical step in ensuring increased efficiency and encouraging business partners to also use environmentally sound methods and technologies.

What Are the Benefits of Green Logistics?

We’ve mentioned it once or twice already: green logistics benefit the environment as well as the businesses that implement them. But those bonuses may not be obvious – so we took the time to list them out:

• Lower costs: sustainability means being obsessed with energy efficiency. This goes from more efficient vehicles to better route planning. It may even mean sharing transport with competitors. And a penny saved on fuel costs is, well, a penny saved!
• Future-proofing: by switching to greener and more efficient technologies, companies become better prepared for the future. The climate crisis already brings about changes both natural and political. As European Central Bank states, the costs of renewable energy keep falling by 10% or more while fossil fuels are getting more expensive. That’s before you account for things like green subsidies or taxes aimed at making oil less popular.
• Brand image improvement: as we mentioned in the intro, people aren’t too happy about the whole “hell in a handbasket” scenario. This makes them value companies that aren’t hastening that process. Switching to sustainable logistics shows that your company cares about environmental issues and social responsibility.
• Customer satisfaction: let’s say your company decides to use night-time distribution to capitalise on non-existent traffic. This is one way to dodge the challenges of the forecasted 32% increase in delivery vehicle traffic and 21% growth in congestion. But if you use internal combustion engines, you’re generating a lot of noise that will annoy sleepy customers. However, electric vehicles are much quieter – a win-win-win for you when you account for the decreased carbon footprint.
• Regulatory compliance: measures like European Union’s Green Deal, the European Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), and the Waste Framework Directive are aimed at combating the climate crisis. And green logistics operations are just the thing to be compliant with these and future regulatory decisions.
• Lowering carbon footprint: all those electric vehicles? None of them run on fossil fuels. With the increasing efficiency of green power, even their power suppliers won’t be generating carbon emissions anymore.

What Are the Disadvantages of Green Logistics?

If green logistics were that easy to implement, this article would be redundant. But it’s not something that can be done completely painlessly. Here are the main issues:

• The initial investment: sustainable logistics practices will pay off – in time. However, now, you’re faced with the issue of upgrading your vehicle fleet. You need to implement new cargo handling routines and discover new efficiency measuring practices. You’re also developing new tools like self-repackaging cardboard boxes or plant-based couriers. A company has to have the will and the wealth to take on that challenge.
• Replacing fossil fuels: EVs are still mostly the province of smaller inner city transports, but they are developing fast. Volvo just sold 1,000 of their electric models to a single client after seeing Amazon order 20 last year right after they rolled off the assembly line. So the situation is improving, but it is not yet at the point of it being a buyer’s market.
• Developing the infrastructure: push comes to shove, a gas station can be found nearly anywhere. It’s also not that hard to find a dump that will accept your trash. But what if you need rapid charging electric stations? What if you want your packaging to be composted, recycled, or upcycled? Some of these services are outside the purview of any single company.
• Educating the consumer: the consumer may want green solutions, but they have also been enthralled by same-day delivery. And measures like optimised delivery routes are mostly imperceptible to them. So informing the consumer of all the changes that they should be happy about is a challenge in itself.
• Working on the bleeding edge: “environmentally sustainable logistics” is a fairly new area. As such, the methods and the systems aren’t fully mature yet. As such, logistics providers don’t yet have the expertise needed to employ them fully. There will be new issues that will have to be solved without the help of developed best practices.

How Do You Implement Green Logistics?

Green logistics strategies require more work than just repeating “electric vehicles” three times in front of a mirror. Here are some measures one should take to make it happen:

Ensure green partnerships

Little is gained if your supply chain partners view environmental protection as an annoying extra. Plus, the revelation of such business bonds can cause massive reputational damage. To avoid that, a company has to ensure that it works with businesses as committed to minimising environmental impact as them.

Optimise warehousing

Making a warehouse into a green-house can start before the first stone is laid: warehouses can be designed to be energy- and carbon-neutral. New Logic III demonstrated that a new warehouse can achieve a 99.8% BREEAM rating back in 2019. But there’s more to that than building new spaces: existing warehouses can have their energy supply sorted while their interiors are redesigned according to the newest storage optimisation strategies.

Rethink waste management

Logistics processes generate more than just carbon. Start by using eco-friendly packaging, offer reverse logistics features to your existing clients, utilise packaging that can be re-used, and make sure that anything that’s thrown isn’t just literally thrown away.

Prioritise electric vehicles

If you have a fleet of vehicles, it’s unlikely that it will change into sleek EVs overnight. While you’re making the transition to electrical, prioritise those new vehicles for tasks. This will immediately cut down on the emissions, help collect metrics of their use and familiarise staff with their operation.

Incentivise sustainability

The consumer may not know about the intricacies of making your warehouses run on soy, but they are receptive to changes in pricing and deals of all sorts. The easiest way to do is to offer a small discount when the consumer choose the explicitly-green option. Even if that meant that the delivery would take longer, the double-punch eco-friendliness and wallet-sustainability would be very persuasive.

Ensure efficient delivery routes

A parcel hops many a transport as it travels potentially from one country to another. For your leg of the journey, you can ensure that it never travels alone. Every time a delivery van or a truck travels empty, it wastes potential – and energy. For best outcomes in cargo Tetris, a company should employ new, automated cargo optimization technologies. Speaking of which…

Spotos: your port of origin for green logistics

With Spotos, you can start working towards sustainable logistics today. By utilizing the automated system that matches your cargo with trucks looking for return loads, you’re already increasing efficiency and minimising the carbon footprint. Start here and you’ll be already lowering the environmental impact of two companies – yours and the logistics provider’s!