Red lorry, yellow lorry… green lorry?

Following on from Monday’s article urging you to get out of the car and get on your bike, as a means of saving money, keeping fit and reducing carbon emissions, we’ve got another suggestion.

We don’t often promote vehicle-based initiatives on Green Pepper because we prefer non-polluting forms of transport but we except that, until all vehicles run on clean and renewable energy, all we can do is try to reduce the amount of CO₂ we produce.

Statistics reveal that a quarter of all lorries and vans travelling on British roads are completely empty. That’s over 112,000 lorries and 450,000 vans, pumping out a staggering 36 million tonnes of CO₂ a year. That’s 7.2% of the UK’s carbon footprint!

Addressing the problem

Now a new service called Shiply is helping to address the problem by matching consumers and businesses with couriers and logistics providers who have capacity to spare.

Since June 2008 Shiply have saved 1,115,442 miles (to date) and over 272,500kg of CO₂ – that’s about the same as flying from London to New York 448 times!

“Our aims are to offer a viable solution to the haulage industry for keeping their lorries full, save consumers money in the face of the credit crunch and contribute towards a greener solution.” Robert Matthams, Managing Director

Shiply enables you to find cheap courier services by matching you up with transport companies already making similar deliveries across the UK and Europe, reducing the number of journeys and saving you up to 75% off the delivery cost.

Utilising empty vehicles

Feedback-rated hauliers, looking to utilise their spare capacity, place competitive bids (like a reverse-auction) to carry out the jobs. By using vehicles that would otherwise be empty, users of the site can expect significant savings and help minimize the number of wasted trips.

Anything that needs to be transported, from boxes to boats or even entire household moves, can be listed on the site – free and with no obligation to accept a bid.

And, to assist Ebay users, Shiply has developed Ebay tools which allow bidders to import items they have won or are currently bidding on into Shiply – ready to receive to bids from transport service providers.

Find out more and list items for delivery on the Shiply website.

No recommended reading.

Tagged as: carbon footprint, CO2, Ebay, emissions, reduce, vehicles