Green skies

When the Queen of England starts worrying about the impact of aviation on her carbon footprint, its time for the industry to start paying more attention. Following her state visit to the US earlier this year, Buckingham Palace made a donation to an environmental charity to offset the plane journeys made by the royal party, based on the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by the flights. With environmental concerns regarding air transport increasingly coming to the forefront in the green agenda, the aviation industry stands accused of being the most ecologically-damaging method of transport.

This indictment could spell serious consequences for the airfreight industry in particular, with some of the leading suppliers now looking at alternative, more ecologically sustainable methods of transporting goods to reduce their own environmental impact as part of a wider social responsibility agenda.

At the forefront of this new ‘environmentally friendly' generation is British retailing giant Marks & Spencer, which has a significant presence in the Middle East. "Carbon emissions and their impact on our environment is becoming an extremely important topic throughout the world. We want to contribute to the global control of such emissions," explains Nigel Rea, general manager for Marks & Spencer, UAE.

To achieve the object of carbon neutral operations, the company has pledged to take active measures to minimise the amount of airfreighted food it supplies. One of these measures includes labelling food that has been imported with a small aeroplane symbol and the word ‘airfreighted'.

"By labelling the products, customers have a choice. Many customers have become increasingly aware about the environment and want to know more about their food and how it has been transported," Rea elaborates. "In conjunction with the objective of sourcing and buying more food locally and minimising the amount of airfreighted food, Marks & Spencer has formulated a clear plan to reduce the environmental impact of its operations."

Although these measures are currently focused on the company's UK operations, in the Middle East region efforts are made to ensure that the vast majority of food products are exported from the UK to Dubai via sea freight. "Only minimal quantities are transported by air, where product shelf life and freshness are key considerations," states Rea.

Nonetheless, even the airfreighting of fresh produce is coming under scrutiny, following the announcement of the UK's main organic certification body, the Soil Association, considering to withdraw its organic approval of products imported into the UK by air cargo due to concerns regarding greenhouse gas emissions.

Nils El Accad, CEO of the Organic Food and Café in Dubai agrees that it is imperative that organic food suppliers need to work towards reducing the environmental effects of transporting their produce. "We import most of the goods by sea and make it a policy to have the lowest possible carbon foot print attached to the travel of the produce," he emphasises. "We airfreight the minimum and only those items that need to be, which we also import from as close as possible like Egypt, Uganda and India, rather than the USA and Australia."

Whilst such measures have been met with applause from environmental groups, there has been growing alarm for those food suppliers in developing countries, whose main exports are perishable goods. Whereas airfreight fruit and vegetables from Africa, for example, account for a small proportion of overall greenhouse gas emissions, the loss of trade could have devastating consequences for the farming communities from those countries.

Indeed, The International Air Cargo Association (TIACA) emphasises that potentially ‘isolated ad-hoc attempts' to find immediate solutions to the environmental impact of airfreight is not the way forward. More recently, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has similarly echoed this viewpoint, arguing that a ban on air transport would result in only a 2% reduction of global CO2 emissions, while having a devastating effect on the 8% of global GDP it accounts for.

To focus solely at the environmental impact of air cargo flights, without taking into account the essential economic contribution it makes globally, is clearly a big mistake. Instead, in order to find a more sustainable solution, environmentalist need to be working closely with the air cargo industry to find some common ground for achieving both their goals.

IATA airlines, for instance, have a voluntary commitment to improve fuel efficiency by 10% between 2000 and 2010, and the association claims that it is well on target to meet this requirement, reporting a 5% improvement in the past two years alone.

Whilst sceptics may quickly point out that this has been mainly due to economic pressure rather than environmental, it has nonetheless resulted in significantly decreasing CO2 production related to fuel consumption. In 2005 alone, airlines' CO2 emissions came down by 1.8% per 100 revenue tonne kilometres, according to IATA.

For the Luxembourg-based all-cargo airline Cargolux, recognising and reducing its environmental impact is something it takes very seriously. "The major challenge for us is how to reduce the environmental impact of Cargolux airfreight operations in terms of emissions," says Robert Van de Weg, senior vice president sales and marketing at Cargolux. "We look at how to reduce fuel consumption, and overall how to ensure environmentally sustainable growth."

The carrier has been actively putting in place operational measures aimed at tackling the criticisms levelled at its industry. "We are investing in latest technology aircraft, continuously optimising routings, promoting continuous descent, maximising load factors and promoting reduced fuel consumption as far as possible through training of crews," he lists.

Van de Weg believes that airfreight carriers can ensure a better balance between the economic benefits and environmental issues of airfreight by ensuring a clear and constant commitment on all levels to environmentally sustainable operation. "Research and development into new fuels and aircraft will be key in the future," he adds. "Cargolux is infact the launch customer of one of these new more eco-friendly Boeing B747-8, and strongly promote the design and construction of fuel efficient aircraft."

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