Transport firms put cost before sustainability

Reducing their organisation's environmental impacts is not a key issue for the vast majority of travel and transport companies, business executives have confessed.

According the latest KPMG European business leaders survey, which quizzes 1,500 senior managers, only 3% of those working in the transport sector agree that developing their company’s green agenda is a priority.

By contrast, 60% say that cutting costs was of an important issue at the moment, while 42% believe improving their businesses management of cash and capital is key.

However, almost three-quarters (74%) of respondents claim they will double their efforts to manage down their carbon footprint once carbon taxes are levied.

“These results show that until the green agenda starts to have a real or perceived direct impact on the bottom line, industry executives will necessarily focus their efforts elsewhere,” said Dr Ashley Steel, KPMG’s global head of transport.

“Improving cost efficiency is clearly the hot topic for transport companies which are all facing rising fuel costs. As fuel costs are largely uncontrollable, operators therefore focus on other significant cost items such as staff costs, engineering and IT.”

Rachael Dillon, climate change policy manager at the UK’s Freight Transport Association (FTA), disputed the findings arguing that a recent survey of FTA members found that 60% of logistics companies consider the carbon agenda to be a board-level priority.

“A significant number of companies working in the logistics sector recognise that by improving their vehicle fleet’s fuel efficiency, they can not only reduce costs but also reduce carbon emissions,” she said.

“FTA’s Logistics Carbon Reduction Scheme, which has 54 members including Tesco and Wincanton, is evidence there are many businesses involved in freight transport and logistics have carbon at the top of their agenda.

“These companies have committed to collectively reduce the carbon intensity of their freight transport operations by 8% by 2015 on a 2010 baseline and provide their fuel data to FTA on a regular basis so that we can aggregate an overall carbon footprint for the industry.”