Anyone who shops on the Internet sometimes has a queasy feeling. Greenhouse gases are released when the shipments are transported. The parcel industry wants to become more sustainable, Swiss Post is opting for a little more transparency.
Corporate customers of Deutsche Post DHL will in future receive comprehensive information on how many greenhouse gases were released when sending their items. From August, all business customers will receive a report in which their respective CO2 emissions are broken down by month, as the logistics group announced in Bonn. It is about the entire process chain from collection to delivery of parcels, returns, goods mail and other services such as bulky goods transport.
Post manager Ole Nordhoff said the aim was to help customers become more sustainable. “Only when I, as a business customer, know how big my individual CO2 footprint is, can I decide where to start in order to bring my products to the end customer in a more environmentally friendly way.”
Parcel industry on course for growth
Because of the booming online trade, the parcel industry has been on a growth course for a long time. However, the many vans on the streets lead to criticism from politicians and the environmental protection movement, who point to the CO2 balance of the flood of parcels. In order to make their business model less harmful to the climate, the entire parcel industry is investing more in electromobility. The market leader DHL in particular is speeding things up. The company already has around 23,000 electric transporters in use in Germany for the last mile to delivery.
With the CO2 report for corporate customers, Deutsche Post DHL wants to better show its advantage over the competition. Because for corporate customers – such as online retailers – it is positive to have relatively low CO2 emissions. If corporate customers can easily compare the greenhouse gas values of the parcel service providers, this could be a competitive advantage for DHL.
However, such a CO2 report for corporate customers is not entirely new. The competitor Hermes reports that standardized CO2 reports have been made available to clients for a long time. “Basically, we have noticed that the interest in CO2 data among our business customers has increased noticeably in recent years,” says a Hermes spokeswoman.
Source: Stern
