Global warming has been increasing at an alarming rate. One of the many elements that contribute to climate change is the transportation sector. With the increasing demand for same-day deliveries, businesses have no other choice than to adapt to fast and efficient delivery services.
While that leaves a positive impression on your customers, it comes with its share of drawbacks. This delivery approach can increase your carbon footprint significantly, as it causes an increase in carbon emissions.
The question is can the last-mile delivery be optimized for the environment? What if you achieve customer satisfaction with smart and efficient delivery services, and reduce your carbon footprint at the same time? It’s definitely not a one-man job. A single entity cannot prevent climate change or bring a huge transformation in the transportation ecosystem alone. They need to work in groups to make the process environment-friendly and sustainable. Let’s take a look at some ways we can work together to make last-mile delivery easier on the environment.
Using the Last-Mile Delivery Solutions
Last-mile delivery is the final and ultimate step in product distribution. A company receives a parcel order from the customer, packs the product, and sends it to the nearest distribution center. From there, the parcel is delivered to the customer’s address or their selected pickup point. That’s how the process goes. Bringing the last-mile delivery app into the picture will make delivery incredibly easy and fast.
The tool offers automation and seamless integration capabilities. It’s an all-in-one solution, consisting of different delivery options and a vast range of intelligent tools that ensure fast and cost-effective delivery. The best part is you can use its reporting and analytics function to track your delivery activity, drivers’ performances, the most suitable routes to different destinations, the common causes of delays, and other factors. This allows you to make data-driven decisions that can optimize your delivery process, avoid excess fuel consumption, and cut costs.
Route Optimization
A critical aspect of successful last-mile delivery is route optimization. Although the feature is integrated into the delivery management software, not every solution has it. Route optimization is crucial, not just for the environment, but for your business as well.
Whether you are in the delivery business or need delivery services regularly for your orders, knowing the safest, fastest, and easiest route to the target destination will help you save time and cost in delivery. It reduces fuel consumption and the time the drivers would otherwise spend in traffic. Route optimization is selecting the most suitable route to the destination based on different factors, like the weather condition, traffic in the area, any ongoing construction, and road condition.
Calculate Your Last-Mile Footprint
Generating reports and metrics that show the contribution of different factors to your carbon footprint is essential to identify the areas you need to improve or the steps you can take to optimize the delivery process. It will also help you know what sustainability goals your business must work on to make your delivery environment-friendly. For instance, if you find one of the huge delivery trucks is consuming too much fuel and taking plenty of time to deliver goods from point A to B, you can switch it to a smarter, smaller, and faster vehicle.
Use Electrical Vehicles
Fuel-powered vehicles account for the maximum carbon footprint your business generates through the last mile. Think about the carbon emission your vehicles will generate if you are dispatching a large number of deliveries every day. A smart strategy would be to use electric vehicles, instead. These are battery-powered bikes, cycles, and trucks. The electric fleet is designed to reduce carbon emissions, noise and air pollution, and your business’s impact on the climate.
You can also encourage your drivers to use sustainable delivery options, like delivering parcels by walking (if the destination is near the distribution center). Or, they can use cycles for delivery. These will have a significant impact on your carbon footprint, as switching to the electric fleet will result in zero carbon emission, thus helping you make the delivery more sustainable.
Consider Carbon Offsetting
If an electric fleet sounds too expensive or unachievable for your industry, you can contribute to the environment in other ways. For instance, carbon offsetting schemes are designed for businesses and individuals that want to do their part for the planet by counterbalancing their environmental impact. You can calculate your average carbon footprint from fuel, carbon emission, and other factors, and grow the equivalent number of trees to minimize your impact on the environment.
Automate Delivery Management
Automated delivery management has many perks. For starters, you can assign deliveries to the drivers automatically based on their availability, proximity to the customers’ addresses, etc. If you have not yet implemented automation in delivery management, you will most likely experience delays. Other challenges, like the driver having to drive back and forth between the same neighborhood multiple times to deliver parcels, can lead to unnecessary expenses.
Deliver at Drop-Off Points
Instead of delivering to the customers’ doorstep, you can choose the pick-up points for each neighborhood where you deliver frequently and ask your customers to pick up their parcels from that location. This way, your driver will have to drive less.
They can deliver more parcels with fewer carbon emissions and lesser fuel consumption than usual. It’s also pretty convenient for the drivers, as home delivery requires finding the customer’s delivery address. Most of the time, the parcel gets delayed because of inaccurate instructions by the customer or the customer's unavailability. Having a specific location where all parcels are delivered can save drivers time and overall cost in delivering parcels.
Bottom Line
Last-mile delivery became popular during the pandemic. Since then, it’s been considered an ideal way to manage delivery operations and achieve customer satisfaction. The concept can, however, result in increased carbon footprints if not managed well. That’s where the last-mile delivery solutionscan help. They can help you get real-time updates about the parcel. These solutions also help with route optimization, reports and analytics, and faster delivery.