Strategy 5

Delivery Services are to Delivery, as…

…public transportation is to commuting. Rather than ten trucks making ten deliveries to the same location each day, why not put all the packages on one truck, and make one delivery? You can count on the fact that UPS, FedEx, and other major delivery services are much more energy-efficient delivering your printing than your local printer. So, even if you're not certain the cost of your printer's “free” delivery isn't buried somewhere in your bill, you can rest assured the delivery isn't fuel-efficient… and it certainly isn't carbon-free.

Incentive

Beyond the obvious efficiency of one truck delivering multiple packages, from multiple sources, to a single destination, no industry is more highly-incented to be energy-efficient than the transportation industry.

First Step

The first step in ensuring energy-efficient package delivery is controlling all modes of transportation – air, rail, ship and ground. This enables delivery services to not only control your package from pick-up to drop-off; it also enables them to control energy consumption and carbon emissions. The major delivery services all have their own air, rail, ship and ground fleets.

Route Management

Delivery services like UPS employ sophisticated route management software to continually shrink routes and delivery times. In 2006, Package Flow Technology enabled UPS to shave 28.5 million miles off its already efficient delivery route, reducing fuel usage and emissions (www.ups.com).

Fleet

Hybrid electric, fuel-cell, and alternate fuel powered delivery vehicles now represent nearly 20% of the ground fleets for major delivery services… and the number is growing every day. Between 2000 and 2006 UPS's global fleet of alternative-fueled vehicles have traveled more than 126 million miles. That translates into a huge reduction in fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, in 2006 UPS's ground fleet averaged only 0.1059 gallons of gas, diesel and compressed natural gas (CNG), for each package delivered. Individual print shops can not come close to matching that level of fuel and emissions efficiency.

Riverside's Commitment

Design through Delivery. That's Riverside's commitment. Creating design ideas that emphasize conservation, investing in 3rd Generation computer-to-press technology, utilizing an 18” x 12” print format that minimizes waste, and using soy-based, waterless inks and recycled paper, would all be diminished if we dropped the ball with delivery. So, Riverside completes its commitment to Conservation by Design by utilizing energy-efficient package delivery services to finish each job.

8 Take-Aways

What can you take-away from this analysis?

Moving communications from paper to the internet is not the best conservation strategy.
It takes enormous quantities of dirty, non-renewable, fossil fuels to power the internet, while trees are clean, renewable and recyclable.
You can save tens of thousands of square feet of paper every year by simply designing for, and specifying, an 18” press.
You can save significant power, on short-run jobs, by specifying 3rd Generation computer-to-press technology.
Americans are currently recycling more than 50% (over 51 million tons) of the paper we use each year.
Print-On-Demand benefits both conservation and your business.
‘Versioned’ printing can help you leverage energy-efficiency to increase sales.
Commercial delivery services are the most energy-efficient means of delivering your materials after they are printed.

If you are fully-committed to conservation, it makes sense to incorporate these ideas in your ‘green’ strategy, and print your commitment on everything you produce.

We are committed to conservation. Our printing process uses up to 85% less power, eliminates up to 3,200 square feet of waste paper, uses recycled stock, soy-based inks, and just-in-time ordering to minimize waste and shrink land-fills.

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