Swedish forwarder to offer ‘carbon free’ airfreight
28 / 06 / 2019
Sweden-based freight forwarder Scandinavian Logistics Partners (Scanlog) will cease selling traditional airfreight and is now launching Always Carbon Offset Airfreight programme as it becomes the latest transport firm to make an environmental pledge.
The company will from now on offset for the CO2e* emissions caused by the airfreight, including pre- and on-carriage, that is handled for its customers, by investing in projects certified according to the international standards Gold Standard and Climate & Community Biodiversity Standard.
Scanlog’s CEO Mattias Ljungberg said: “For many years we have been working on the concept of Responsible Logistics with a big focus on reducing the environmental impact of transportation. Together with our customers we optimize routing, capacity utilisation and not at least transport modes.
“Thanks to this we have become a major rail freight operator. But we are also one of the major air freight forwarders in Sweden and now we want to take a step towards reducing the climate impact of aviation.
“We are the first logistics company in Sweden, and probably in the world, who now always carbon offsets all air freight we handle without cost to our customers. It feels very good.”
Mathias Wideroth, executive chairman and co-founder of Scanlog, added: “Pending fossil-free aviation, which will most likely be introduced gradually over the next couple of decades thanks to the development of both biofuel production and electrified aircraft, we who fly must also act here and now. It therefore feels important to contribute to reducing the climate impact of aviation immediately.”
Aviation accounts for about 2–3% of global greenhouse gas emissions (CO2e) and the transport sector as a whole account for about 15 %.
The aviation sector’s CO2e emissions are small in relation to other sectors’ emissions, but CO2e emissions per transported unit are considerably larger than for other modes of transport.
The environmental impact on transport and logistics is increasingly coming under the microscope. Earlier this week TIACA and CHAMP teamed up to launch a sustainability programme for airfreight.
*CO2e allows other greenhouse gas emissions to be expressed in terms of CO2 based on their relative global warming potential (GWP). CO2 has a GWP of 1, methane has a GWP of approximately 25. Read more on CO2e here.
