What is green logistics and what are its benefits?

Is it possible to reconcile economy and ecology? Yes. Furthermore, if we analyze the broad concept of sustainability, according to the UN, we must add the social dimension to the economic and ecologic ones. Currently, the trend id to move forward to policies that are able to balance these three aspects in companies, bringing a positive impact to the natural and social environment.

Related to the aforementioned, logistics, thinking on efficient ways to organize tasks, can greatly contribute at the moment of designing storage, transportation and distribution systems that are environmentally friendly.

How does green logistics work?

One of the objectives of green logistics can be measuring the carbon footprint of the logistic operations and creating plans and actions to improve it, to reduce the ecological impact in the storage, transportation and distribution processes. With this goal in mind, we can recommend the following actions:

1. Using a fleet of vehicles with a good preventive maintenance management that emit CO2 levels according to or below regulations.
2. Constantly train drivers on safe driving and the correct use of their vehicles.
3. Consolidating cargo with the help of the commercial areas to comply with the units of delivery of an order, to combine different orders in a single vehicle, using 100% of its space.
4. Designing intelligent delivery routes that consider more than one destination or the best routes, either on the outbound or return journey.
5. Building ecologic warehouses with environmentally friendly materials that allow a controlled use of water and energy, and that industrial waste is handled in a sustainable way, controlling its disposal or reuse.
6. Promoting the use of recyclable packaging made from recycled materials or that are compostable.
7. Having a strict control of the available stock in storage optimizing the use of space in order to avoid the losses due to expiration, manipulation damages, the unnecessary displacements inside the warehouse, and automizing several processes related with the area to avoid wasting energy and losses.

Benefits of green logistics

It can seem like a challenge to design and implement a business model that is profitable and sustainable at the same time. The precision of this can favor the development and consolidation of the companies or logistic areas and it will become more and more important to meet new and demanding regulations that protect and benefit the planet.

Some of the benefits of having a green logistics model are:

1. Designing a future-proof business model: environmental regulations that companies will have to comply with are going to be more and more strict, so it’s fundamental to design a green system to produce, sell and distribute a product, aligning with the circular economy. The whole supply chain must be designed taking care of the environment considering the redesign of reverse logistics and their important role in our future.
2. Sustainable competition: society is being criticized about the way we live in each of the involved aspects, which leads to demand, value on behalf of the companies a sustainable model and to prefer an alternative that is respectful with the planet. Having a business that works with green logistics implies having competitive advantage over companies that don’t have it.
3. Control energy resources: the smart use of energy resources on each of the stages of the supply chain results in economic savings for the company.
4. Create a green culture in the company so all team members feel they are part of this sustainable model and become aware of the issues, so they are the ones that generate the changes towards the sustainable objective with the guidance of the company.