Sustainable Freight
Background
The South Australian Freight Council (SAFC) believes that the freight industry has a responsibility to become more sustainable and reduce its impact on the environment.
Green Freight, SAFC’s environmental statement, was developed through the SAFC Sustainable Supply Chains Management Team, with input from other key stakeholders in the South Australian transport and logistics industry.
The document highlights current industry efforts to become more sustainable, and discusses future initiatives that the industry should consider, including:
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Promoting the dissemination of examples and case studies through its communications channels;
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Supporting environmental and productivity gains that may arise through government plans, policies and regulations;
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Better informing the community of the benefits of improved access for larger freight units, such as larger heavy vehicles or aircraft;
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Considering industry incentives to retire old, less efficient equipment to be replaced by newer equipment that is more productive and offers better environmental performance; and
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Looking at effective sustainable heavy vehicle driver training and to communicate this throughout the transport and logistics industry.
To encourage the freight and logistics industry, as well as government and the local community to support the concepts and initiatives identified within the Green Freight document SAFC has envisioned the creation of a ‘virtual’ internationally linked Freight Environmental Applications Centre (FEAC), later to be simply titled "Sustainable Freight".
The creation of Sustainable Freight is expected to go some way to address the environmental issues faced by the industry. At this point in time FEAC could be developed potentially as an add-on to the Logistics Information and Navigation Centre (LINC – www.the-linc.com.au) or as a stand-alone resource.
Sustainable Freight would provide information on environmental freight applications - particularly case studies, industry performance reviews, statistics, environmental assessment tools, environmental policies and regulations, available emerging and new technologies (including fuels) fact sheets, research projects as well as a forum to address issues and exchange ideas.
SAFC through Sustainable Freight could demonstrate the freight industry’s environmental credentials by using existing information, conducting an industry environmental practices survey and undertaking an assessment of policies. This body of knowledge can also act as an important industry benchmark.
An important part of Sustainable Freight would be its network and quality of information it can provide. For FEAC to have a point of difference in Australia it needs a strong network from where it can access details of the latest emerging technologies and case studies.
SAFC believes that an efficient, effective, internationally competitive, multi-modal, state-wide freight system is essential to enabling the State to achieve the social and economic future it demands. A fundamental objective therefore is the need for the industry going forward to undertake its activities in a sustainable and an unobtrusive manner.
SAFC recognises that climate change, its issues and accompanying environmental regulation are likely to have a relatively greater impact on the future competiveness of South Australia’s transport and logistics industry over most others. This is further compacted by the relatively larger proportion of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) within the industry that don’t possess the same resources as larger organisations to deal with current or future issues.
While large organisations generally have the resources to undertake research and information searches and the capacity to implement sustainable initiatives most SMEs may not have this capacity or may not know where to start.
The Federal Government over the past few years has committed to a number of policy, regulation, legislation, advisory and promotional initiatives. However, SAFC also recognises the need for a customised and targeted approach to meet the particular needs of transport and logistics stakeholders in South Australia.
It is therefore that SAFC wishes to initiate action to help bridge environmental information gaps in provision of sustainable transport and logistics information to SAFC members and industry stakeholders through implementation of "Sustainable Freight”.
See the Case Studies Here
Oportunities for Road and Rail Freight