This comes our way from Fast Company by way of the Environmental Defense Fund’s Innovation Exchange blog: someone is concerned about the carbon footprint of caviar. Well, the sturgeon that produce caviar to be more precise.
It all swims around the largest effort ever to transport live fish. Sturgeon had to get from Germany to Abu Dhabi and through the creative initative of a caviar production facility, a biotechnology company, and a cleantech logistics company it was accomplished with a 90% reduction in CO2 output as compared with traditional methods (and cost savings, too).
Carbon output from shipping has become a hot topic. Big shippers are telling the carriers that “carbon emissions matter.” Not only are they a good way to measure environmental impact but they also correlate well with operational costs: save the planet, save some money. It’s a win-win.
Shippers have responded with greater transparency into carbon output of the various modes of moving fish, and everything else, from point A to point B. This data can be sliced-and-diced many ways to measure efficiency. According to EDF, “It allows the comparison to be easily broken down along functional unit, grams of carbon per TEU kilometer for container ships or grams of carbon per ton-mile for truck, rail and air. It is technology neutral.”
New tools are coming online, too, thanks to efforts such as BSR’s Clean Cargo working group and the Carbon War Room. Suddenly analyzing the impact of transport on the environment and the bottom line requires less swimming upstream.
What do you think? Is your company measuring the impact of transport?
