SEND'N'SAVE - 
Carbon neutral shipping
from the EXPERT for climate protection

The amount of CO2-emissions generated when sending a letter or package is as individual as the content. Not only that the climate impact depends on the quantity shipped or the weight of the package, but also the shipping route plays a crucial role.

If you look closely at the factors that determine the shipping route and thus the amount of emissions generated, you will find many characteristics to be influenced.

The way of a letter begins at the sender, it can play a role in the later course, whether the recipient address was printed by machine or written by hand possibly poorly legible.

Arrived at the sorting office (mail center), the sizing is done first. This is done by hand in most sorting offices.
Employees who have come to work in various ways leave their mark on the CO2-footprint of the letter dispatch.

After sizing the letter is stamped and sorted further, this is largely done by machine. The resulting electricity consumption with the corresponding emissions also flows into the emissions balance of the letter dispatch. In a next step, a reading and coding machine converts the address information (postal code, city, street, house no.) Into a bar code, which is printed on the letter in orange color. In addition to electricity consumption, emissions are also caused by material consumption in the form of printing ink.
In the case that an address is not machine readable, the completion of the 
address is done manually because the orange bar code is essential for delivery due to the contained information. Together with a lot of other letters,
most of the time it goes by truck to a main handling center (hub), where consignments from different sorting offices meet and are sorted by machine again for forwarding.

Arrived at the destination hub, the letter is loaded along with many others on another truck direction letter center. Once in the mail center, the letter has to be sorted once more. Here, however, he is already assigned to a deliverer (postman) and sorted in its course sequence according to his planned route. On the penultimate part of the way, the letter is transported from the letter center to the appropriate delivery station of the recipient.

Here the letter is picked up by the deliverer and delivered to the recipient. Again, it affects the emissions balance, which vehicle the deliverer uses. While delivery by bicycle is climate-friendly, delivery with LNF is taken into account in the balance sheet.

The pursuit of the path shows that there are many emission sources in the shipping industry, which are still very different.

However, it can be summarized that, in addition to emissions for pure transport, emissions also arise for the consumption of electricity (sorting plants), the consumption of material (stamping ink) and the use of staff.

In order to determine the exact emission quantities one would have to determine the individual positions for each letter exactly. This is very extensive and the necessary data is not accessible.

However, the data is fully accessible to the biggest mail-order company DHL, so that the emission factors used by DHL can be taken over.

His journey continues with the way to the delivery base. Here are several ways in which the letter achieves its goal: the sender can send the letter e.g. create a mailbox by bicycle, which is emptied by the shipping provider to create the contained letters with a light commercial vehicle (LNF) to the delivery point. 
A second conceivable possibility would be that the sender brings his letter with a car to the "post office" or even the shipping provider picks up the letter from the sender.

Different ways that lead to a goal and thereby cause different CO2-emissions. While traveling by bicycle produces only the smallest emissions and the transport in the LNF generates comparatively little emissions (more than 1 letter is transported and the emissions only occur pro rata), the journey to the post office by car will be more clearly included in the calculation. If the vehicle is an electric car, which is powered by green electricity, the balance sheet looks different again.

The delivery point is an intermediate station, where the letter is collected with other letters and parcels and then transported by truck, linked with transport emissions, to the nearest mail center.

From here the letters and parcels are transported in all directions. For long
distances, the transport can also be made by air freight. The used means of transport has the greatest effect on this point of the shipping route due to the distance covered. Table 1 shows a comparison of various means of transport.