Companies adopt environmental sustainability programs mostly for one of three reasons: the customer asks for it, the government mandates it one way or another or the market demands it to remain competitive. But how do you know if the results of your green programs are measuring up? And how do you know if you are ready to respond when governments ramp up regulation of carbon emissions?

Unfortunately, there’s no single solution and standards vary widely. Nevertheless, transportation and logistics companies can still gain a firm grasp of the strengths and weaknesses in their sustainability programs, and develop a plan to position themselves for success as the playing field changes. They can start by taking stock of their total carbon emissions output.

The most obvious sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the supply chain are trucks and other vehicles, such as forklifts, which use fossil fuels and participate directly in the movement of freight. But when accounting for your company’s total carbon footprint, you’ve got to consider every aspect of your daily operations and how it relates to the environment. It means understanding more than the impact of trucks, it means evaluating everything from electricity levels to natural gas use and fully understanding your operations.

Lean tools and methodologies, such as value stream mapping, are especially valuable in helping understand carbon streams and how to drive out waste from them. Understanding the larger picture provides a more complete view of where to focus sustainability efforts. All of this analysis provides insight into the true impact of your organization’s supply chain on the environment.

There are different segments which influence sustainability, and different systems for measuring their impact. Understanding what measurement is most effective for which area of your operation is an important step to accurately and fully measuring the extent of your carbon footprint. These can include, among others, the GHG Protocol, the National Greenhouse Energy Reporting (NGER) Act, the Climate Registry Information System (CRIS), EPA’s SmartWay Transport Partnership and any custom systems. Creating a plan will help to identify your carbon emissions inventory with the various registries, and integrate them into one manageable and measurable program.

The ultimate goal is putting in place effective measurement tools that provide an accurate accounting of sources of carbon emissions, and how these affect your footprint. It’s imperative to creating meaningful, realistic and, most importantly, credible sustainability and carbon management programs. A number of organizations, including Menlo Worldwide, are developing the capabilities and methodologies to help companies manage this emerging challenge.

It’s not an issue of if carbon management and reporting will become a requirement, it’s when. There’s never been a better time to take action and position your company for success. The risks of waiting for an industry standard and not starting out on your own path are simply too high.

In their discourse over climate change legislation, lawmakers continue to propose reduced vehicle travel as a strategy to lower fuel consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The transportation industry must further its commitment to the environment, but impeding our nation's mobility by enacting policies to limit growth in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) should not be a national policy. In addition to eliminating personal freedom and threatening our nation’s productivity, getting people out of their cars and off the roads also means less revenue for the ailing Highway Trust Fund (HTF).

Instead of limiting vehicle use, we must become more efficient and utilize technologies to decrease fuel use and limit carbon emissions. It’s pleasing to see support for a few of the sustainability recommendations already supported by the trucking industry.

Through a strong partnership with engine manufacturers, new over-the-road truck engines far exceed the EPA’s diesel engine emission standards set in 2007. Hold a white cloth over the exhaust stack of a new truck today and the cloth stays white.

Regulatory policies to limit and enforce speed limits are also important, not only for highway safety, but also for the reduction in fuel use. Enacting a national speed limit not to exceed 65 miles per hour and governing speeds of all trucks manufactured at no more than 65 miles per hour would drastically reduce fuel consumption and reduce CO₂ emissions.

Reducing traffic congestion is another vitally important strategy for lowering fuel consumption and carbon emissions.

Source: www.corrosioncost.com

The Texas Transportation Institute estimates that Americans waste 2.8 billion gallons of fuel each year because of congestion on our highways. We must have a system for highway infrastructure funding that will effectively support these necessary environmental goals.

The federal fuel tax is still the most efficient way to collect revenue for the HTF, but it must be updated to keep up with our current needs. The current tax – 18.4 cents per gallon charge for gasoline and 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel – has not been adjusted since 1993, yet costs of highway projects continue to escalate. This is a very poor formula for maintaining a healthy trust fund. The trucking industry supports an increase in the fuel tax, so long as the revenue goes directly to highway infrastructure and is not diverted to non-highway uses, as it has been in the past.

The trucking industry is deeply committed to reducing fuel consumption and GHG emissions, but these objectives do not have to come at the expense of a safe and effective highway transportation system.

Many consumer products companies are adopting new “green” product shipping packaging that is lighter, takes up less space and consumes fewer natural resources. From a sustainability perspective the benefits certainly seem clear.

Packaging engineering is at the forefront of helping companies reduce the overall carbon footprint from the manufacturing and distribution of products they sell.  There are many benefits: decreased overall cost, reduction of weight attributed to packaging, reduced amounts of used packaging which is recycled or goes into landfills, lower overall transportation costs, reduced product life-cycle carbon footprint, among others. These are all quantifiable and desirable benefits.

But in the real world of transportation – the networks of ships, trains, containers and trucks through which these goods physically are handled and moved from manufacturing plant to store shelf, what are the implications of this “less is better” strategy?   One of the primary purposes of shipment packaging is to protect the product while in transit.  So as packaging becomes smaller, thinner and lighter, unless great care is taken in the re-engineering, material selection and redesign of packaging, the “protection” role of product packaging can be weakened and compromised, increasing the risk of and exposure to damage.

Shipment packaging must meet approved specifications which are established expressly for the transportation of the commodities the packaging contains. If it is not, your transportation service provider may deny shipment damage claims that arise due to inadequate packaging.

Packaging specifications are available for review through the National Motor Freight Traffic Association (NMFTA) which runs the full gamut for all manner of materials and goods, including acceptable exceptions to those standards, as necessary, and provisions for the construction and integrity of the package. These are established to meet minimum requirements to ensure the product for which the packaging was designed will in fact be sufficiently protected during transport.

Inadequate shipment packaging creates problems for both the shipper and transportation provider.  In a multi-shipment, multi-commodity environment (such as LTL or parcel), an array of shipment sizes, weights and package configurations are co-loaded together, with the carrier loading them in a manner that seeks to protect the integrity of all shipments on a trailer.  When shipment packaging either 1) fails to provide adequate internal protection or 2) is not constructed in a manner that can withstand the loading and unloading of goods in a trucking operation, no one wins.  The carrier ends up with two dissatisfied customers: the shipper and the consignee.

While it is absolutely the right thing to do all we can to reduce the impact of product packaging on the environment, we cannot forget that effective package design also must meet industry standards and provide for adequate protection against shipping damage.  It’s part of the total product cost equation that, if inadequately addressed, will lead to more product waste – the opposite result of a true “green” objective.