It seems inevitable that pollution and temperature levels around the world will increase with growing populations, mass consumption, and related industrial processes. The environmental toll will do more than impact wildlife though. Humans can expect more diseases, food and water shortages, and conflict over habitable land. 
Business owners have the means to lessen the negative impact that their companies have on the environment. Utilize the following earth-friendly shipping processes to help safeguard everyone's future and make your systems work a little better.

Streamline Processes
Whether you ship packages or raw materials, any process that forces you to waste energy adds to the ever growing amount of damage to the environment and climate change. Streamline your entire shipping process so you're wasting less electricity, clean water, and fuel. Identify areas where work might be slowing down and come up with a few solutions to speed up common practices.

Ship Smarter
Most consumers hate big retail shipping boxes filled with more air and packing materials than products. Instead of generating waste, invest in materials that provide better protection in smaller spaces and ship products in boxes that are only slightly larger than product packages. 

Upgrade Transportation
If you are shipping anything using diesel-fueled trucks, it is time to invest in new or used semi-trucks powered by environmentally-friendly or renewable alternative fuels, such as vegetable oil and electricity. If you plan to stick to fossil fuels, invest in designs that cut down on tailpipe emissions. You can ask sellers like Arrow Truck Sales what models they might recommend for better mileage and gas economy. Additionally, try to only run your trucks when they have full loads so they are not pouring pollutants into the air for light shipments.

Use Recyclables
Make certain you use recyclable materials and previously recycled materials as much as possible throughout your shipping process, including recycled cardboard boxes, packing materials, invoices, and shipping labels. When you replace equipment or parts, ship the old elements back to manufacturers. Metal, plastic and e-waste recycling centers re-purpose the materials or have used equipment or parts repaired so they can be resold.

Choose Wisely
Some common shipping tools are incredibly cheap, but fail to degrade in landfills, come from environmentally unfriendly manufacturing origins, or waste precious resources. Use products labeled "biodegradable”, "environmentally-friendly", or "green" such as biodegradable packing peanuts and environmentally-friendly lubricants and adhesives whenever possible. 

Although many of these changes seem expensive and labor intensive, any business can achieve these types of results by making the changes through carefully planned out steps over a two to five year period. Some changes like switching to recyclables can be made even sooner. Make your shipments a little more earth-friendly by implementing some of these changes today!