UPS: Delivering on Sustainability
With more than 300 packages being shipped every second at peak times, this Christmas will be UPS's busiest – but it remains up to the challenge of delivering those packages sustainably
Original article on theguardian
Have you finished your Christmas shopping yet? Or are you scurrying around online and hoping that your deliveries will come in time? It's more than likely the latter – after all, we know now that we can be trawling the web right up to the last minute, and retailers and logistics firms will make sure that our purchases are with us before Christmas Eve.
The growth in demand for deliveries in 2013 is only driven in part by the increase in online shopping – it's also down to the lateness of Thanksgiving in the US this year, meaning that the busy run-up to Christmas has been compressed into just a few weeks rather than spaced out over more than a month. If you add it up, there are 26 shopping days and 17 shipping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year – making it the shortest holiday shopping season on record. Just compare that to 2012, when there were 32 shopping days and 21 shipping days; it's a lot of work crammed into a very short space of time.
That means logistics firms have a lot of considerations to deal with. In the US alone, for example, UPS plans to hire an additional 55,000 seasonal workers to work as drivers, helpers, package sorters, loaders and unloaders, making sure those parcels get in and out to their owners as soon as possible. That recruitment process has been replicated around the world, in all the markets where UPS is active.
Yet if there are more drivers and vehicles on the road making sure that all the presents reach their destinations, that also means more fuel is being used. UPS's approach to sustainability not only helps mitigate these impacts but also delivers operational and financial efficiencies.
Continue reading the orginal article about UPs's approach to sustainability on theguardian >>
Original source theguardian.
