Eco-Friendly Transportation – Reducing Carbon Emission In Logistics Industry 2020

Eco–friendly technologies are presently high cost alternatives for India. For the small-scale Indian logistics services sector, there are no commercially viable and efficient alternatives available. High capital investment costs are a major deterrent when it comes to importing these eco-friendly technologies. Also, the Indian logistics industry is yet to appreciate and understand that Green Logistics is actually compatible with their bottom-line.

With regard to saving costs, fuel efficiency, payload management, routing and driving techniques are of great importance. Performance metrics for monitoring these aspects are still unknown to small truck service companies masquerading as logistics operators. And owing to consumer apathy and lack of adequate awareness, going green and being greener than the competitors, is still not viewed upon as an advantage in the Indian logistics industry. 

The Reverse logistics industry that takes care of recovery, and is responsible for retrieval of parts, recycling of products and disposal of packaging waste, is almost a non-existent segment in Indian logistics. The rise of e-commerce has created a concomitant rise in packaging waste. It is true that many e-retailers have done away with paper receipts to support environment and enhance their green-image.

 But it is not enough, as these e-retailers do not provide consumers with the option of disposing of packaging material, even at a nominal cost. Mandatory legislation with regard to all of these issues, similar to the legislation in the EU, would definitely push both, the consumers and businesses, in the right direction, and give impetus to the ‘circular economy’, while at the same time, contribute to the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan as well.

Rail transport shares have, over the years, seen a sharp decrease of almost two-thirds, from 89% in 1951. On the other hand, road transport share has increased seven-fold, from 10%, within the same time duration. It is essential to restore rail as a primary mode of transport, particularly for freight transport, because rail emissions, per tonne-km, are at least five times lesser than road emissions. This

restoration of rail transport does not eclipse the popularity of road transport in any way because, despite the bad conditions of Indian roads, road transport will continue to retain a major share of commercial transportation as they alone can provide door-to-door delivery, and are the key players in intermodal transport wherein roads are the sole providers of the last-mile delivery. 

To combat the increase in CO2 emissions while traveling distances, some obvious solutions like building bypass roads for managing congestion, adding capacity at specific chokepoints and speeding up traffic, can be implemented to enable the vehicles to maintain an optimal speed that helps reduce CO2 emissions.

However, it has not yet been set into action, even in the Pune or Mumbai Logistics transportation sector, where almost 80,000 trucks pass through every night, for want of bypass roads. Other solutions for road transport are replacement of fossil fuel based technology with bio-fuel based technology, or even with alternatives like CNG, hybrid, battery-operated vehicles and equipment. But these too seem improbable in the short to mid-term future.