With the latest issue of Fleet Executive we published our fifth annual supplement on sustainable transportation practices. When we first started publishing this annual supplement, sustainable transportation practices or “green transportation” as most would call it, was just beginning to become a topic of discussion in the boardrooms of most major shippers and carriers.
When large players such as Wal-Mart, IKEA, Mountain Equipment Co-op, Home Depot and Unilever made a concentrated effort to green their supply chains, carriers began to take notice. For our part, we believed that with the transportation sector being the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada, it was prudent for the industry to become actively involved in devising the new way forward rather than to be left reacting to eventual shipper and government edicts. Our goal then, and now, is to inform fleet managers and executives about the latest technologies and strategies being used to reduce the carbon footprint and at the same time reduce costs, profile and objectively evaluate the efforts of industry leaders in the field, and share the most pertinent data on green transportation.
Yet the naysayers, including some of our media competitors, chose to ignore the trend towards green and the requirement for our industry to lead it. They believed the new focus on reducing the industry’s carbon footprint was a fad that would grow out of fashion with time or a recession that focused the attention of carriers and shippers on cost control.
Well, we have been through the worst recession since the 1920s and we are publishing our fifth annual Green to Gold supplement (in addition to a section on green transportation in every other issue of Fleet Executive plus several similarly focused episodes of Transportation Matters, our award winning weekly Web TV show) because the interest in green transportation practices has not faded. In fact, as you will read in the supplement, the interest in sustainable transportation practices is growing. We believe this is in large part due to something we have stressed since we started publishing our Green to Gold series: a greener future doesn’t have to mean a less profitable one. In many instances, the investments made in greener technologies and transportation practices can pay off in reduced costs. In other words, you can turn green into gold.
In this latest supplement we focus on trailers, an area that has lagged behind in green technology innovation, but which is catching up fast with some interesting new designs. We also follow the rise of green logistics in the boardrooms of major shippers and profile the endeavours of carriers considered to be leaders in practices that make sense for both the environment and the bottom line.
We hope you enjoy our supplement. Also be sure to check out our series of webinars on green transportation practices, coming this fall on www.trucknews.com