Sami, the climate-tech startup that allows companies to measure and reduce their carbon footprint, reveals its five best practices to adopt urgently to decarbonize e-commerce.
A few weeks ago, the study by the New Climate Institute and Carbon Market Watch showed that the neutrality objectives of 24 companies, responsible on their own for 4% of global emissions, will be difficult to achieve because they do not calculate all of their emissions, and in particular their indirect emissions linked to scope 3 (transport, raw materials, product manufacturing, etc.), even though they represent on average 90% of their emissions!
This is an omission that can be found in certain e-commerce companies, such as Amazon, which consider that the emissions linked to the products they sell and which they have not manufactured do not concern them because they depend on their suppliers.
For Sami, it is important for companies to take into account in the calculation of their carbon footprint all emissions related to scope 3 (such as the manufacture of products sold), and in particular for resellers. The latter should indeed mobilize their suppliers and educate their consumers.
The 5 best practices for decarbonizing e-commerce
#1 – Educate suppliers
Resellers should strongly encourage their suppliers to do their carbon footprint by giving them as much information as possible so that they can do it easily (solutions for doing the calculation, financial aid, etc.).
They could even go further by collecting the necessary information from their suppliers and carrying out the carbon footprint of the products sold themselves.
#2 – Educate consumers
E-commerce sites should communicate more about the carbon footprint linked in particular to delivery. Sami therefore encourages them to display the carbon footprint of the different types of delivery (relay point or door to door, delivery time, etc.) in order to encourage consumers to choose the most responsible delivery method.
Today, the consumer is only informed of the cost and delivery of the product, but rarely of its carbon footprint, while 70% of them favor websites that promote an eco-responsible approach according to Fevad.
#3 – Use less carbon-intensive modes of transport
Favor maritime transport rather than air transport to limit the carbon footprint of the purchased product.
Sami also recommends decarbonizing the last mile by favoring low-carbon modes of transport such as cargo bikes or alternative engines other than combustion engines.
#4 – Limit downstream freight
Offer its consumers a pre-order system to avoid having too many stocks in warehouses and having to send them back to the supplier.
#5 – Optimize delivery
Offer consumers options that optimize delivery at the time of ordering, such as the possibility of grouping home-delivered orders or picking up their parcels at a relay point, which are good practices that are easy to set up and not very restrictive .
By adopting these simple gestures, e-merchants should significantly reduce their carbon footprint.
#decarbonize #ecommerce