Green Logistics and Retail Industry

Oreal China and Alibaba recently signed a letter of intent for the "Green New Retail" project, promising that future delivery boxes will use the Forest Management Committee(FSC) certified sustainable paper, and use zipper cardboard boxes or paper seals. The delivery box interior and filling will also use environmentally friendly degradable materials and will achieve 100 % recovery and reuse of the delivery box in the future. The two companies aim to reduce environmental pollution in logistics.

Green logistics is one of the important actions of green retail. It uses advanced technology to carry out transportation, storage, packaging, loading and unloading activities to achieve the goal of reducing environmental pollution and reducing resource consumption. In recent years, with the great enrichment of material products, the logistics industry has become more and more developed. While bringing great convenience, it has also produced a large number of problems such as white waste and excessive packaging. A large amount of white waste was also reported to be found at the depth of 11,000 meters in the world's deepest Mariana Trench. With more than 8 million tons of plastic waste entering the ocean each year, it is difficult to find a "paradise" without white waste on the blue planet where humans live.

Reducing the use of disposable shopping bags can be described as an individual act, but it is the responsibility of businesses and society to improve overpackaging and the use of recyclable and degradable packaging materials. With the improvement of people's awareness of environmental protection, from businesses to consumers are actively trying to do more for the environment. In this year's "618" promotion campaign, the use of zipper boxes saves more than 100,000 kilometers in length.Optimize transportation routes and reduce carbon emissions while saving costs. Walmart, for example, delivered $297 million worth of goods while cutting 11M miles(or 1.6 km per mile) of driving using green power generators, boosting transport efficiency by 10 per cent. Third, promote the upgrading of the consumption structure. Green retail is responsible for driving the transformation and upgrading of the social consumption structure into a healthy and environmentally friendly environment. According to the survey, 80 % of Chinese respondents said they would prefer to buy green products. Accordingly, green consumers have grown an astounding 14-fold on the Ali platform in four years.

"Green is gold", actively transmitting and practicing the green ecological business concept, will become an important guarantee for enterprises to maintain customer loyalty and have lasting competitiveness.

 The vision of green logistics is very good, but it is not easy to know, and the real challenge is not easy. There is an urgent need to establish unified industry standards and avoid duplication of construction and waste of resources. Only if companies and platforms gain business benefits from them, rather than making money at a loss, can green logistics grow deep and strong.

Transfer from: China Logistics and Procurement Network