What techniques are companies using to reduce fuel usage and carbon emissions in transportation and logistics?

The Supply Chain Benchmark Consortium attempted to answer that question in a December report that summarized survey responses from its some 300 members.

As shown in the graphic below, the top tactic right now, used by some 70% of respondents, is simply to try to get more freight on each truck and reduce the number of partial loads shipped.

There are a variety of strategies for achieving this goal, including better transportation planning, working with customers on order patterns, and specialized software that optimizes capacity utilization.

The survey says an almost equal number of companies are employing electric fork trucks as a key strategy, though whether this means a change from gas/propane trucks to electric or simply that companies are using electric is not clear from the data.

Other techniques, including improvement in distributon centers operations and greater use of rail/intermodal, follow in turn in terms of adoption.

Not shown here, the report also found that basic return on investment considerations continue to dominate where companies put their Green Supply Chain focus, as ROI was by far the number 1 "tool" used to drive Green initiaitves.

In second place in terms of tools used was "Full Lifecycle Assessment," a technique that considers the entire lifecycle of a product from "birth" until "death" - an approached used by more than 35% of respondents.

Conversely, just a small percentage of respondents were using more advanced techniques such as "eco-mapping" (about 7%) and true "environmental accounting" (about 4%).

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