Set Your Freight Sustainability Effort Up For Success

As an environmental advocate, I was excited to participate in Innovate: A Ryder Idea Exchange. The event offered me a chance to speak with transportation executives at retail, consumer goods and food and beverage companies about greening product distribution.

I shared several examples of leading companies that are creating business value today by leveraging a freight Freight Sustainabiiltysustainability platform.  Each company succeeded in their efforts by taking a strategic, pragmatic approach to sustainability.  This strategic approach is what the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has dubbed, "The Green Freight Journey."

Successful companies start by taking the nebulous concept of sustainability and making it mean something specific. For example: "We will use fuel more efficiently" or "We will reduce our emissions per product moved."

Organizations that have succeeded in greening their freight logistics also use metrics to track progress towards a goal, such as product moved per gallon of fuel consumed or emissions per ton-mile.

Next, companies use their metrics to evaluate the efficacy of a few specific projects. Projects that deliver financial and environmental returns are scaled up. Those that don't are redesigned or scrapped.

Leaders take their Green Freight Journey a step further by creating long-term goals.  This enables them to focus on continuous improvement.  By putting in place strategies on how to meet long-term goals, companies can easily tease out expensive, one-off projects that won't help them meet those goals. They can, to move past the "big shiny objects" - which might be good for a press release, but it doesn't move the needle on their metrics.

Ocean Spray Cranberries is an example of a company that has found business value through its Green Freight journey.  The organization made headlines last year by collaborating with a competitor to share railcar space on one of their shipping routes. Last summer, Ocean Spray hired an EDF Climate Corps fellow to further analyze the environmental impacts created by the transportation of their products, both between facilities and to customers. Through this effort, the company identified an opportunity to reduce its total transportation emissions 10% by switching to intermodal transportation in a few key routes.

To help companies leverage the power of the Green Freight Journey, we created the EDF Green Freight Handbook. It provides guidance on how to establish metrics and measure program success; assess the best opportunities to drive down costs and greenhouse gas emissions; and build internal support for initiatives.

Whether you are well on your way or just starting out on your own Green Freight Journey, there is business value to be created by moving freight more efficiently.

Source:

http://blog.ryder.com/2014/12/set-freight-sustainability-effort-success/#sthash.HtQ2GeTe.dpuf