Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 3. Green Warehousing Practices and their Classification
Clean-up of Out-
comes
Turn Outputs into
Inputs
To use Less
Substitution
Clean Vehicles/ Fuel Efficiency
X
X
Reconditioning and Reuse of
Pallets and Containers
X
Flow and Activity Optimization
X
Automatic Warehousing Sys-
tems
X
Minimization of Inventories
X
Facility Design
X
On-site Recycling
X
X
Disposition of products
X
gency processes that involve higher consumption
of resources. This extra-consumption translates
into less efficient activity both in economic and
environmental terms. Therefore, any activity that
helps companies to control and more efficiently
execute their direct logistics flow will also help
them to perform better in environmental terms.
Some examples of these value added services:
pallet and container pooling, which involves
reutilization of containers; tracking and tracing,
which helps to control the chain and avoid losses
of goods, and packaging technologies that reduce
the number of losses during transportation and
warehousing.
of the pallets and recycling of broken or
damaged components rather than dispos-
ing of them in landfills. The company in-
troduced several practices to operate in an
environmentally sustainable manner. This
may have been one of the world's first ini-
tiatives for greening the value chain, since
CHEP has pooled pallets and containers
since 1958.
•
Tracking and tracing:
additional services
like tracking and tracing are now key fac-
tors in company development. The control
of product flows and avoidance of losses
are important contributions in efforts to
promote the greening of the value chain.
Information management helps compa-
nies to prevent returns, because they know
exactly when a product will expire, or to
manage returns efficiently, optimizing the
management of resources. This category
also includes technologies such as Radio
Frequency Identification (RFID), which
helps to identify products in a unique way,
without direct visual contact. This allows
companies to conserve resources and to
track damages and individual product
characteristics, providing instant traceabil-
ity regarding the status of various products.
Marks & Spencer introduced RFID tech-
•
Pallet and container pooling:
pooling,
combining and sharing of assets in a com-
mon effort, is by definition an environ-
mentally sustainable concept, since it opti-
mizes asset utilization. The system allows
companies to rent pallets when they need
them and it shifts the responsibility for
creation, maintenance and reconditioning
of pallets and containers to a third party.
The world's leading company in this seg-
ment is CHEP. CHEP does business with
tree farms accredited as responsible and
sustainable sources of timber. The pooling
model encourages the repair and the reuse
