" "As transportation stakeholders, you are part of the solution. If the transport footprint remains high, let's not stop there and find solutions". With these words of encouragement from Isabelle Autissier, President of WWF France, the 2020 edition of the Rendez-vous du transport et de la logistique éco-responsable began, an event organized on October 6, 2020 as part of the Voluntary Commitments for the Environment (VCE) program, which this year focused on: "The ecological transition of transport and logistics: an opportunity to get out of the crisis". Or how to give a CSR breath to the parcel transport sector?
2,760 packages sent... per second
The evidence is stark: the world shipped 2.760 packages per second in 2018, or over 87 billion packages. The figure is up sharply from 2017, when it stood at 74.4 billion. This massive growth is largely due to the internet giants' stranglehold on commerce.
According to a recent 2019 Accenture study, the global package delivery industry is estimated to be worth $343 billion by 2020 and the volume of goods shipped in that same world is estimated to increase fourfold between 2015 and 2050!
Catalogued as one of the most polluting industries, the parcel transport sector has long implemented a sustainable and environmental CSR policy.
🎁 At the end of the article, a little bonus gift, My Flying Box offers you an infographic on the CSR commitments of this sector.
A repository dedicated to logistics
In a sector where issues of ecology, occupational health and safety, and client/supplier relationships are prevalent, there are many challenges to adopting a virtuous CSR approach. In September 2018, the Ministry of Ecological and Solidarity Transition unveiled a A repository dedicated to logistics. Since then, logisticians, transporters... and other players in the sector have been mobilizing around their social responsibility.
Here is a small overview of the challenges of sending packages, with ingenious actions :
✅ Planting trees: the great classic but above all the simplest. 🌲🌳🌴
The website ecologi is specialized in this field: its solution is fun and is intended for families as well as for companies. A simple and funny interface that is programmed according to the number of employees in your company, their sedentary lifestyle and professional travel. From these characteristics, the software then calculates your carbon footprint and the solutions to make it as neutral as possible.
The interface allows you to access your virtual Ecologi "garden", the age of your virtual "plantations", their variety as well as the place of plantation (geographical indication and satellite view). It is also possible to subscribe to options by joining humanitarian projects such as bringing drinking water to Haiti or building windmills in India.
❤ Personally I am a fan of this strategic concept, the interface and especially the simplicity of use.
✅ Putting the human aspect first 👩👨
That it is by the installation of a charter against the slavery of the modern man written and signed by Parcel2Go which is committed to ensuring respect for human rights, and whatever the stage of its supply chain or through various charitable commitments, the human factor is one of the main priorities of logistics
Since 2015, DHL also supports refugees through corporate citizenship activities. The aim of the carrier is to prepare these men and women for the demands of working life and to improve their chances on the job market. As a result, 11,000 refugees have been able to sign employment contracts with the German group since the program began.
DHL Freight has been supporting a rehabilitation center for autistic children in China for six years. Through their classes and various group recreational activities, the children are given the opportunity to lead a happy life.
✅ Electricity 💡 or alternative fuel 🚛
Among all the possible CSR solutions in the parcel transport sector, many companies have opted for a fleet of "clean" vehicles running on LPG or electric power. Chronopost has deployed a fleet of alternatively powered vehicles (195 electric vehicles, 40 natural gas vehicles and 15 cargo bikes) in Paris, handling 25,300 parcels daily from sites called "Chrono City".
This new urban network has enabled Chronopost to reduce its emissions by 87% for this type of activity, i.e. 560 tons of CO2 avoided per year.
La Postethe world's leading provider of "connected" fleets, is a pioneer in this field. The French company has the first fleet of electric vehicles in the world and uses this as a competitive advantage.
The greening of its fleet has enabled it to reduce its CO2 emissions from 171,000 tons in 2012 to 139,000 tons in 2017, a 19% decrease in five years.
At the same time, the group is also working to improve the energy efficiency of its buildings and offset residual emissions.
✅ The last mile 🔚
In the jargon of e-commerce, the last mile refers to the final phase of the delivery of a package. It is the crucial stage that must be optimized for economic, logistical and ecological reasons, while ensuring customer satisfaction.
Nationally, the last mile accounts for about 20% of traffic, 30% of road space, and 25% of greenhouse gas emissions. As the product gets closer to its final destination, the unit cost of transport increases and peaks in the last mile. In fact, many solutions which in the future will propose alternatives not to the last kilometer but to the last meters.
According toIFOP23% of Internet users use drop-off points as their main delivery method. They represent a definite economic advantage since this system limits the number of delivery driver stops (15 stops on average for drop-off points compared to 50 for home deliveries). Drop-off delivery is therefore less expensive than home delivery and also has a positive environmental impact.
Delivery in Point Relais
Thus, Mondial Relay delivers only in Points Relais® (and Drives for bulky packages) in France, an optimized delivery method that limits CO2 emissions thanks to its ability to deliver several dozen parcels simultaneously to one point. The use of the same transport for the delivery and the collection of parcels avoids having trucks running empty. But beyond that, there is a real advantage to this delivery method for the consumer: avoiding delivery failures since the parcel is available at the Point Relais®, and can be picked up at the convenient day and time during 14 days. And to top it all off, Mondial Relay's transporters offer a negotiated offer of vehicles running on natural gas.
✅ And what about us ?
At My Flying Box, we ensure that our partners' CSR commitments are respected and we support them in this process.
Our team travels by electric urban transport (train or tramway), electric bicycle, scooter and even carpooling. We prefer to work from home in order to reconcile family and professional life.
