| More and more, the theme of sustainability and protection of the environment is at the centre stage of global issues. Organizations are facing social and political pressures to move towards environmental sustainability in their practices. In the case of a logistic platform, there is a lack of information on the comparative environmental impact of its operations, which prevents managers from establishing educated environmental strategies.Two goals were achieved. The first one was to benchmark the emissions of these sectors in order to get a clear idea of the dimension of their impact, based on specific assumptions. Results showed that transportation of goods turned out to be the biggest generator of GHG, with 34.7% due to outbound transportation and 28% due to inbound transportation. The building's operation accounted for 18.8% of the total emissions whereas the transportation of personnel accounted for 15.7%.The second goal was to estimate potential savings in GHG emissions for all these sectors by simulating different scenarios. Concurrent with findings in the literature review, the switch from road to rail transportation appeared to be the most promising avenue to reduce the environmental impact of outbound transportation of goods, especially for shipments over long distances. Although other scenarios, such as the promotion of carpooling among employees, the possibility of remote work or the implementation of energy efficiency projects for the building, resulted in less substantial savings, these are still not negligible. Finally, the use of closer suppliers can lead to great potential in reducing GHG emissions however, this would require a review of the entire infrastructure of the supply chain of the company.This research project tackles this void of information by evaluating the greenhouse gas emissions of the main sectors of an existing logistic platform, located in Montreal, Canada. These sectors include the transportation of goods, both inbound and outbound, the transportation of personnel and the building's operations. |
