Freight Forwarders and Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is increasingly taken seriously by businesses of all kinds – and that includes freight forwarders who are responsible for organising the International movement of goods by Road, Sea or Air. Over recent years there has been growing concerns about the environmental impact of freight transport.   

The European Commission defines CSR as ‘the willing inclusion by businesses of social and environmental concerns in their commercial activities and their relations with stakeholders.’ So businesses that are aware of their CSR are likely to look to their freight company to try to minimise the environmental impact of their freight forwarding and international freight transport.

The British International Freight Association (BIFA) has highlighted that some freight forwarding companies are now looking to ensure that the environmental impact of freight forwarding can be kept to a minimum. This includes helping to educate customers on ways help make freight transport more environmentally friendly. Many deep sea shipping companies operating from the Far East and Asia to Europe have recently agreed to cut the speed of their container services by 10% and some UK – Irish ferries will also be going slower, making the shipping company customers wait a little longer for their freight forwarding but reducing carbon emissions.

Another area where freight forwarding companies are looking to reduce their impact on the environment is taking away for recycling the cardboard and other packaging used to protect goods during freight forwarding. Where new warehouses and depots are being built by shipping companies, there is now more interest in developing these on previously used brown field sites rather than green field locations.

And at an infrastructure level, there is European government interest in further developing the role of both railways and inland waterways in freight transport, so as to reduce the impact on the environment as both of these modes of transport are considered to have a much lower carbon footprint than road particularly when the movement involves freight shipments that are heavy and or bulky.

By responding to growing interest in protecting the environment, the international freight industry is also able to make savings that can be passed onto freight forwarding customers, for example the savings in fuel costs as a result of investing in the latest fuel efficient vehicles or aircraft. In an era of ever increasing fuel costs these savings can form a highly significant proportion of total freight transport costs.

ICT has also made a difference to freight forwarders’ impact on the environment, with a lot of the documentation and freight transport updates now being made electronically rather than by using paper. So how far will shipping companies go as they look to become more sustainable in the future? Reducing the environmental impact of freight transport is a big challenge but one that the freight transport industry is rising to meet. In future, it is likely that the international freight industry will segment, as many other markets have already done, to include ‘green’ options for freight services, catering for the needs of those businesses that are demanding them.