Climate change has become one of the major concerns of the international population in recent decades. The effects that are gradually being felt in the climate and that directly affect life have put the international community on alert and it is looking for an effective way to reduce this impact.
The increasing use of e-commerce has resulted in a boom of the transport and logistics sector. However, what on the one side has benefited the population has led to an increase at the same time of CO2 emissions, which only aggravates the climate crisis.
For this reason, the reduction of the carbon footprint has been highlighted as one of the best options for reducing the effects on the climate. But what is a carbon footprint?
Carbon footprint, a key factor in sustainability
The carbon footprint is the total volume of the greenhouse gases produced by human economic and everyday activities.
The transport sector is booming and is one of the main responsible for the increase in the carbon footprint, so it is essential to find a sustainable transport alternative to reduce it.
Organisations such as the European Union have introduced regulations and plans to develop more sustainable transport. Most of them are included in the EU Directive 2019/1161 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 June 2019, which seeks to promote more sustainable vehicles for this type of activity.
However, there are also other ways to help reduce the emissions of long-distance journeys.
How to reduce your carbon footprint
As mentioned above, there are easy-to-implement actions that can contribute to reducing the carbon footprint:
- Efficient route planning: By first evaluating routes, it is possible to find the shortest and most direct routes between the origin and destination of the goods. In this way, CO2 emissions into the atmosphere can be reduced.
- Define loading and unloading schedules: This allows efficient management of the docks, reducing vehicle waiting times and, therefore, emissions.
- Opting for full loads: Making the most of every kilometre of a journey is essential, which is why it is recommended to say goodbye an empty truck and opt for loaded return journeys in order to be more efficient.
- Recycle packaging: Eliminate single-use packaging for goods and use biodegradable materials.
- Review and renew the vehicle fleet: Checking the condition of vehicles to ensure they are in good condition and opting for new hybrid or less polluting vehicles is also an efficient way to help reduce the carbon footprint.
- Improving infrastructures: Having more efficient warehouse structures and enclosures, as well as using renewable energies for their use, also helps to reduce the carbon footprint.
Our commitment to reducing our carbon footprint
At WebTrans we realise that, given the nature of our business, it is essential to take action to help reduce our carbon footprint. For this reason we have developed a tool to help our business community work more consciously and sustainably, including a CO2 calculator.
As we have mentioned before, making each journey more efficient can be crucial to reducing these emissions. Our CO2 calculator takes as a reference the distance between the point of origin and destination, as well as the weight of the cargo being transported to get an estimate of the emission.
Although our CO2 calculator is currently only available for road transport, we aim to make it available for sea and air transport in the near future.
United to reduce carbon footprint
Our CO2 calculator is not the only commitment we have made at WebTrans to help reduce our carbon footprint. That is why we want to offer everyone the possibility to offset these emissions by participating in the UN carbon footprint offsetting platform.
On this platform we will do our bit by participating in UN projects worldwide that help to promote a more sustainable society, business and energy model around the globe.
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