Green Freight Asia Bi-Annual Meeting

Green freight refers to strategies targeted at the movement of goods via road, rail, marine, inland waterways and air, for the purpose of improving logistical and environmental efficiency. It is designed to help manufacturers and logistics companies contribute towards positive environmental change, while maintaining economic growth and competitiveness. This concept offers promising solutions to environmental concerns and urban logistics issues, both of which have been identified as major global challenges.

Incorporated in 2013 as a non-profit organisation, Green Freight Asia (GFA) was founded by DHL, UPS, Hewlett-Packard, IKEA, and Lenovo. Since then, its member base has grown to include Heineken, Infineon, Procter & Gamble, Ants Logistics, and many other well-known corporations who help achieve GFA’s key objective of promoting sustainable practices across the entire supply chain for Asia-Pacific sourced freight movement.

GFA convened its bi-annual meeting in SMU on 14 May 2014. Themed “GFA Label – From Concept to Implementation”, the meeting was attended by 65 experts, including members of academia, and representatives from multinational and local logistics companies, manufacturing firms, business associations, and non-government organisations from Asia Pacific, Europe, and the United States.

The session focused on the implementation of the GFA Label, a green label certification that recognises freight logistics companies and manufacturers committed to promoting environmental sustainability through benchmarking operations, tracking fuel consumption, and improving their environmental performance annually. Due to be launched later this year, the label has four distinct tiers of recognition – each represented by a green leaf icon – to differentiate member companies that demonstrate increasing levels of commitment to, and progress towards the adoption of green freight practices. In order to be awarded with a green leaf, companies have to adopt measures to improve fuel efficiency for fleet operations, or collaborate with GFA-labelled carriers.

Explaining how the label would help members achieve substantial gains in fuel efficiency and market competitiveness, GFA CEO Stephan Schablinski said: “Let’s say one of our member shippers is starting a bidding process, or is researching on suitable companies for a logistics contract. He could log in to our database system, access a list of logistics companies, and compare their rankings. The list, which is updated constantly, will display the companies’ green freight rating. The member shipper can then easily identify who he wants to work with. The value of this comes from both clients and vendors being rewarded and recognised for their green freight practices.”

Attendees were given the opportunity to review the GFA label criteria. They also benefited from case study findings on successful eco-labelling, and the sharing of firsthand experience by companies that took part in a test run of the GFA data submission for the GFA Label. The meeting, which ended on a productive note, marked an important milestone for GFA.

Back to Research@SMU Issue 14 (May 2014)