In future, all Swiss Post business customers will receive information about their respective CO2 emissions when sending parcels. The group is thus following the example of its competitor Hermes.
In the future, business customers of Deutsche Post DHL will receive detailed information about how many greenhouse gases are released when sending their items. From August, all corporate customers will receive a report in which their respective CO2 emissions are broken down per month, as the logistics group announced in Bonn. The entire process chain is recorded, from collection to delivery of parcels, returns, goods mail and other services such as the transport of bulky goods.
CO2 report as a guide
Post manager Ole Nordhoff said the aim was to help customers become more sustainable. “Only when I, as a business customer, know how big my individual CO2 footprint is, can I decide where to start in order to bring my products to the end customer in a more environmentally friendly way.”
The booming online trade has put the parcel industry on a growth course for some time. However, the increasing number of vans on the roads has drawn criticism from politicians and environmental movements; they complain about the negative effects of the flood of parcels on the CO2 balance.
In order to make its business model more environmentally friendly, the entire industry is increasingly investing in electromobility. The market leader DHL in particular is speeding things up: around 23,000 electric vans are already in use in Germany on the last mile to delivery.
Competitive advantage through sustainability?
Deutsche Post DHL uses the CO2 report for its corporate customers to demonstrate its advantage over the competition. For corporate customers such as online retailers in particular, it is positive to have comparatively low CO2 emissions. If corporate customers can more easily compare the greenhouse gas values of parcel service providers, this could be a competitive advantage for DHL.
However, such a CO2 report for corporate customers is not entirely new. The competitor Hermes reports that standardized CO2 reports have been made available to clients for a long time. “Basically, we have noticed that the interest in CO2 data among our business customers has increased noticeably in recent years,” says a Hermes spokeswoman.