DHL Global Forwarding joins US green freight initiative

DHL Global Forwarding has joined a freight industry environmental program in the United States that should allow it to verify and reduce its impact on climate change and air pollution. It has become the third business unit of Deutsche Post DHL to sign up to the SmartWay Transport Partnership, which is run by the US Environmental Protection Agency, the federal pollution watchdog.

The six-year-old partnership has more than 2,600 partners signed up, including freight shippers, trucking companies, rail companies and logistics firms.

DHL Global Mail and DHL Express are already signed up to the program.

Program members are expected to help reach targets to cut carbon dioxide emissions – blamed for contributing to climate change – by between 33m and 66m tonnes in the next year, while also cutting smog-causing nitrogen oxide emissions by up to 200,000 tonnes.

The reduction in pollutants are to be achieved by improving environmental performance of freight operations.

DHL said its Global Forwarding division would demonstrate its environmental leadership and corporate responsibility by joining the partnership.

Joining the partnership was part of its ongoing GoGreen climate protection program, it said, which seeks to improve energy efficiency across all operations by 30% by 2020 – including for subcontracted transportation services.

Partners on the EPA program are given SmartWay Shipper Index Factor scores to distinguish the very best performers.

DHL Global Forwarding starts out with a score of 0.75 – the same score that DHL Express has, defined by the EPA as “average” among partners. DHL Global Mail has been scored at 1.25, earning praise for “outstanding environmental performance” by the federal regulator.

UPS and FedEx both also have divisions that have attained the 1.25 score on the program, with the EPA noting that: “These Partners already are utilizing most of the commercially available fuel saving strategies and are actively evaluating the latest emerging technologies.”

Sonia Nuñez, Head of GoGreen for DHL Americas, said she was “extremely optimistic” about measuring the movement of cargo and strengthening the DHL Global Forwarding’s SmartWay score this year.

She added: “These measurements will allow us to gauge our DHL Global Forwarding subcontractor’s emissions which will help us reach our 2020 goal.”