Top 5 green delivery solutions for e-commerce | RAJA

With the increasing debate about ecology, you, as a logistics manager, have made a decision: you now want to send your orders via an ecological delivery method, more eco-responsible than the traditional relay points or home deliveries.

Good news: you’ve come to the right place to make a sensible choice!

In this article, you’ll discover 5 different eco-friendly delivery options available to you, whether you want to send small parcels or large ones.

Option #1: Carriers with clean delivery vehicles

To have your packages delivered in an environmentally friendly way, you can choose transport providers that have updated their vehicle fleets to include more eco-friendly solutions.

Some of them now offer fleets made up of..

• Hybrid or even fully electric vans
• Trucks running on CNG (Natural Gas for Vehicles) or Bio Gas

These transport solutions can significantly reduce the carbon impact of your deliveries.

A few transporters offering this type of solution:

• Vert Chez Vousand its fleet of commercial vehicles, ranging from 20 m3 to 19 tonnes
• Volta Trucksand its electric trucks
• Ecolotransand its electric and CNG vehicles
• Deretand its electric, hybrid or CNG fleet

Option #2: Couriers by bike or cargo-cycles

Last-mile delivery is currently in the spotlight, with many logistics players, such as Colis Privé, Cogepart and Amazon, looking at it to offer cheaper and more advanced solutions in terms of customer experience.

Indeed, last mile delivery can represent up to 53% of a company’s overall shipping costs, not to mention the pollution, both atmospheric and noise, emitted in urban areas by traditional e-commerce delivery solutions.

In order to face these challenges, ecological transport solutions for the last kilometre have been developed: couriers on bicycles and cargo-cycles.

These are ideal for transporting light and bulky parcels, and the vehicles are usually equipped with suspension to absorb shocks and allow fragile products to be delivered without the risk of breakage.

What’s more, these are silent vehicles, which limit noise pollution and parking requirements, thus avoiding congestion in urban areas.

Some carriers offering this type of solution:

• AppliColis, which connects bike or cargo-cycle deliverers directly with your company
• Stuart, which has the largest fleet of ecological delivery drivers in France
• Swoopinwhich can provide your home deliveries in several European countries
• Vlovea self-proclaimed specialist in “cyclo-logistics
• La Poste, which offers, in certain cities such as Toulouse, its Ecologic delivery service in cargo-cycles

Option #3: Collaborative delivery

Are you familiar with the principle of collaborative delivery, also known as crowdshipping? Operating on the same model as carpooling, this is a delivery method that consists of entrusting your e-commerce orders to private individuals.

In exchange for a fee, these individuals can then deliver your parcels on their daily routes, making it an ecological delivery method that limits the intervention of other vehicles on the road.

A few transporters offering this type of solution:

• Cocolis
• MyBoxMan
• LiVert
• PickMe
• WayToMe
• Yper (which works with the Cora supermarket)

Option #4: Automatic deposit

The principle of the automatic deposit is simple: the carrier places your order in a locker, available in the public space, and secured by a code received by the customer. The latter can then come and collect his order 24/7.

Thanks to this method of transport, delivery rounds are reduced: the delivery person only has to drop off the parcel in one place, and the ecological impact of the delivery is reduced.

Moreover, it is one of the delivery methods that particularly takes care of the customer experience, as the customer has the freedom to pick up his parcel whenever he wants.

Some carriers offering this type of solution:

• La Poste, with its PickUp service
  
• Mondial Relay
  
• Certain e-commerce sites, which have their own automatic lockers in France, such as Amazon and its Amazon Lockers, or FNAC-Darty

Option #5: Carriers committed to the environment

Some transporters, even if they do not have a green fleet of vehicles, are committed to driving in an eco-responsible manner to limit their CO2 emissions.

This is particularly the case for those who have trained their teams to drive in a more eco-responsible, gentler way, and for
those
who
optimise the tyres in their fleets. Knowing that under-inflation of around 17% leads to an increase in fuel consumption of around 1L/100km, one can imagine the reduction in the ecological impact of a well-maintained fleet of vehicles

Other transporters have also signed the Label CO2 charter approved by ADEME, which consists in particular of respecting the Euro V and VI standards.

For example, the transport company Bray pays particular attention to its carbon footprint. As a signatory of the Objectif CO2 charter, the company has set up fleets of green vehicles, promotes renewable energy (both via its vehicles and on its operating site), and has introduced carbon offsetting to go even further.

Our additional tips for choosing your ecological deliveries

If you want to go further in the eco-responsibility of your delivery methods, here are a few more expert tips to ensure that you not only have a limited ecological impact when transporting your goods, but that you also take care of your customer experience from start to finish.

Review your shipping times

It’s a fact: an express delivery will often be conducted in a partially empty vehicle, to meet the fast delivery time that the customer demands.

That’s why it can be worthwhile to make your customer wait a few extra days, to get your parcels into vehicles that are truly optimised in terms of load, and limit empty trips.

Choose carriers that are customer experience oriented

The delivery experience of your customers is an important part of their brand experience, so it is crucial that you choose not only environmentally friendly delivery methods, but also carriers that are committed to providing an optimal experience for your customers.

In particular, make sure that your carrier allows your customers to..

• Track their orders from A to Z
• To change their shipment during the course of the journey (both the delivery address and the time at which the packages are delivered)

Read the insurance conditions of your carriers carefully

The idea behind reading the insurance conditions carefully is to avoid unpleasant surprises if the delivery of your package does not go smoothly.

It is up to you to check these conditions closely, especially if you are shipping fragile or valuable goods.

Conduct regular transport tenders

Conducting regular transport tenders allows you to compare the solutions available to you.

By creating a clear specification, including all the key criteria on which you will select your carriers, you can ensure that you find the best solution, both in terms of eco-responsibility and the cost of shipping and the customer experience offered.

To go further on this subject, please consult the 7 tips from ColisConsult for a successful transport tender.

Reduce the weight-volume of your parcels

Last but not least, optimise the volume weight of your parcels. You probably know that for certain types of shipment (international or express), carriers charge you by volume weight: a method that takes into account the volume of your packaging.

By reducing this weight-volume, you not only reduce your transport costs, but also the ecological impact of your deliveries, because smaller parcels mean less space taken up in delivery vehicles, and therefore fewer rounds for the carriers.

To do this, take the time to considerusing packaging that limits the weight-volume of your shipments, such as..

And if you need to, take the time to use the RAJA crate and box search engine to find the right packaging for your goods from among the 1,200 available formats!