Germany’s trans-o-flex and two of its Eurodis partners are supporting Green Freight Europe, a newinitiative to measure CO2 emissions through the transport chain.
The Austrian Post subsidiary said it is among more than 30 international forwarding agencies,logistic companies, freight forwarders, industrial companies and associations which have joinedforces to form Green Freight Europe. Austrian Post and PostNL, both members of the Eurodisalliance, are also among the initiative’s founders.
One of the initiative’s concrete aims is to develop a software tool that makes it possible tocalculate and monitor the emissions along the logistic sector’s entire transport chain. This alsoincludes the emission data of contractors at an international level. The British company EST(Energy Saving Trust) specialising in such programmes has already been chosen to develop thisapplication based on a central database.
“By joining forces with other logistic companies and dispatchers interested insustainability, we can manage to close the gaps in emission registration,” commented Oliver Rupps,managing director of trans-o-flex. “This helps to make our emission balance more precise and wecan, especially at an international level, provide our customers with more detailed data about ourCO2 footprint and also have an additional basis for the further improvement of our emissionbalance.”
The more companies that apply the joint Green Freight Europe method, the smaller the risk tocompare ‘apples and oranges’, tof said. Last but not least, it is also more cost-favourable todevelop a joint standard than to have a separate system for each company.
“What makes this approach so unique and valuable is the fact that the Green Freight Europeinitiative is a real industry initiative involving representatives of all groups that areinterested in securing sustainability in the logistic business,” Rupps added.
trans-o-flex said it is one of the pioneers for sustainability in the transport business and,as one of the first companies, set up its own CO2 balance already in 2007, updating it every year.As the first nation-wide network in Germany, trans-o-flex is exclusively supplied with eco-power.
In its environmental balance, trans-o-flex orients towards the worldwide acknowledgedGreenhouse Gas Protocol that helps to quantify and understand emissions in various grades. Thesegrades are called Scope 1 to Scope 3, with Scope 3 being used for the summarised emissions thatrepresent the decisive overall factor. However, here is where almost all providers of logisticservices have a problem: as the actual transport service is often commissioned to a third party,there is, on the one hand, hardly any detailed information as to the emissions caused duringtransport and, on the other hand, they can only be influenced indirectly. Even though the customersput their service providers increasingly under pressure to sustainably reduce their emissions, thiscan only be successful, when all partners in the transport chain work together and develop jointconcepts to reduce emissions.
This is why trans-o-flex has decided to participate in the Green Freight Europe programmefrom the very beginning in order to have a say in the development of standards and achieve progresswith respect to the emission balance of international transports. “We are, therefore, very happythat, with Österreichische Post and Post.NL, we have found two other partners in our internationalEurodis network, that have decided to support the new programme,” Rupps added.
