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Three Easy Tips for Shipping Green

Posted on February 26, 2015

Written by broussard_press

Greenifying your business’s shipping practice is the best way to save money, engage in corporate social responsibility, and to do your part to help reduce or prevent damage to the environment. Making the decision to go green with your shipping can be an easy one, but how you’re actually going to do it can seem like a pretty daunting task. Here are a few easy ways to start shipping green.

1. Use Transportation Software
This is something you should be doing already, but a good first step in making sure that you’re shipping green is to make sure that you’re using integrated transportation management software. This is going to make things greener in your shipping department in a couple of ways. One, it will find the best freight rates for the service you need — which is usually going to be the most efficient option for shipping as well — this could also save you up to 80% on your shipping. Additionally, taking advantage of online freight logistics management is paperless too, which is a green practice.

2. Pack Carefully
Another way to start shipping green is to think carefully about the materials you use for shipping and how you’re packing boxes. Packing material is a necessity for shipping, but some are recyclable and some are not. For example, bubble wrap can be recycled and reused, but Styrofoam cannot. When you do choose packing materials, choose things that can be reused or recycled as much as possible. When your staff is packing boxes, make sure they do so as efficiently as they are able — no boxes within boxes, combining shipments when possible, and so on.

3. Avoid Shipping Overnight
Offering overnight shipping is great customer service, but if you’re aiming for greener shipping practices, you’re going to want to avoid it. Ground shipping uses less fuel than air shipping does. This is going to lower parcel prices as well, since overnight is a more expensive method of shipping. Generally, asking customers to wait a few days for ground shipping or asking them to pay a premium cost for overnight is going to be your best bet.

Do you use transportation software, a certain type of packing material, or avoid certain types of shipping as green efforts for your business? Feel free to share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.