Green Freight - Environmental Defense Fund Supply Chain Solutions Center

Green Freight

Reduce emissions and improve efficiency

Freight movement accounts for 8 percent of all corporate greenhouse gas emissions, making it one of the largest carbon footprint contributors. The emissions come directly from all the trucks, trains, ships and planes that carry goods between each node of the supply chain. There are huge financial incentives for reducing the environmental impact from freight … and companies have the power to make it happen. By employing smarter logistics strategies, they can operate more efficiently and affordably.

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Ocean Freight

Ocean freight is the most environmentally sustainable global shipping option. Learn how to make this a major piece of your intermodal mix.

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Air Freight

Air freight is the most expensive and carbon-intensive transport mode. Optimizing your air freight usage can lead to big economic and environmental benefits.

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Rail Freight

Rail transport burns a lot less fuel, and emits a great deal less greenhouse gases, than trucks.

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Road Freight

Thirty-six percent of U.S. truck trailers are underutilized. Capturing just half of this capacity would cut freight truck emissions by 100 million tons per year.

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Warehouses, Distribution Centers, Facilities

Warehouses, distribution centers and facilities can be a great place to start when looking for energy efficiencies.

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Measuring & Reporting

New technologies and methodologies are making data collection, analysis and sharing simpler, faster and more effective. This provides key information back to stakeholders throughout the supply chain. Measuring and reporting should help your supply chain partners tell their story better.

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Stakeholder Engagement

Understanding the motivations of different groups involved in your supply chain is a challenge, but can go a long way when showing how your goals are relevant and beneficial to them!

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Policy

While voluntary corporate actions to reduce GHG emissions are important, only public policy can deliver the pace and scale of reductions needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. That’s why policy advocacy is an essential element of corporate sustainability leadership. Companies can make a difference by supporting policies that drive down greenhouse gas emissions, improve air quality, unleash innovation and accelerate the transition to a low-carbon freight system.

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Business Case

Companies implementing freight optimization plans often cut costs in addition to emissions. Explore case studies on companies that have achieved financial gains on top of their environmental ones to build the business case for your company’s freight optimization strategy.

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Expert Organizations

In the U.S., freight transport accounts for 16 percent of corporate greenhouse gas emissions, making it one of the largest carbon footprint contributors.

There are many resources available to help you reduce your impact.

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Green Freight Resources

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Main Library

Green Freight Resources

Looking for solutions that are uniquely relevant to you and your company? Here you can filter by resource title, date, type. Below (left) you can filter by narrowing categories and sub-categories, as well as where each resource sits within the different levels of the sustainability journey.

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Title

Date

Type

Report: Accelerating zero-emissions delivery

A Zero-Emissions Delivery Zone (ZED Zone) can accelerate commercial vehicle electrification and enable companies to hit their clean shipping goals.

02/18/2021

Report

Pathways to net-zero: A guide for business

A new report from EDF+Business, with analytical and research support from Deloitte Consulting, LLP, provides specific recommendations for the transportation and agriculture sectors, and for the retail and technology industries. It also includes a roadmap with detailed action items that companies, industries and sub-sectors can take today relative to their own operations, investments, coordination and advocacy to drive meaningful change, fast.

01/25/2021

Report

The business case for sustainable e-commerce

How people shop is changing. Creating a transparent online marketplace that offers safe and sustainable products is critical.

08/19/2020

Guide

Webinar: climate leadership with Lyft and Ford

Join EDF to learn why Lyft and Ford chose bold climate leadership in the midst of a pandemic, how they’re going to achieve their targets, and why advocating for policies supporting a net zero future is a crucial element of climate leadership.

07/29/2020

Webinar

Carbon credit guidance for buyers

Learn about the six quality objectives that buyers can use to ensure they are purchasing high quality carbon credits.

07/15/2020

Report

Webinar: setting science-based targets

Kealy Herman, WSP, discusses how to ensure that your corporate targets are aligned with current climate science and how to determine which approach is right for your organization.

10/31/2019

Webinar

Supply chain leadership ladder 2.0

The Supply Chain Leadership Ladder is a maturity model that BSR has developed for companies to evaluate and evolve their approach to supply chain sustainability.

10/08/2019

Report

Webinar: quantifying scope 3 emissions

Theresa Eberhardt, EDF, discusses how to transition from goal-setting to implementation when quantifying your scope 3 emissions.

09/30/2019

Webinar

Webinar: how business is taking on climate change

AT&T and the DOE's Argonne National Laboratory discuss the Climate Change Analysis Tool, which enables AT&T to visualize the impacts of climate change on business operations 30 years into the future.

09/30/2019

Webinar

Webinar: the supply chain leadership ladder

This webinar will introduce you to the Supply Chain Leadership Ladder, a maturity model that BSR has developed for companies to evaluate and evolve their approach to supply chain sustainability.

02/28/2019

Webinar

The Sustainability Journey

Get your company started on the sustainability journey here! From overviews and introductions to advocating for policy, and everything in between, this is where you should start.

02/25/2019

Tool

Green freight 101: introduction

Reducing freight’s impact on greenhouse gas emissions is a major, long-term challenge for logistics professionals. Critical progress can be made, though, starting today.

02/24/2019

Guide

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