Assessing your environmental impact
Deliveries make up a significant proportion of emissions generated by some businesses.  The number of deliveries in a period can be recorded.  The distance recorded will preferably be from place of manufacture but often this will not be known and in which case the distance from supplier should be used. 

The number of drop off points is used to find your business' proportion of emissions for the journey, you may be able to ask your delivery person for their average drops or estimate it based on vehicle size compared to the volume of the goods you typically receive.

Conversion factors that can be used in estimating emissions relating to deliveries are:

• 1 mile = 1.61km
• HGV Lorries have emissions of approximately 1kg CO2 per km
• Other Lorries have emissions of approximately 760g CO2 per km
• Vans have emissions of approximately 400g CO2 per km

Deciding on your targets
The amount of emissions relating to deliveries strongly depends on the size of business and sector within which you operate.  Many businesses will be able to reduce deliveries by 20%, in some cases much more.

It is important to remember that most businesses do not publish actual figures for their all inclusive emissions total.  If you feel, for example, that deliveries to customers is by definition a high figure for your type of business, this should be seen as an opportunity.  For instance a mail order company, a wood yard, hire centre or building merchant will all be making regular deliveries resulting in a high emissions figure.  This potentially has scope for considerable reduction, particularly when described as CO2 kg / £1,000 delivered goods.  Often it is the reduction that is important and can be highlighted in any environmental statement.

Reducing your impacts
By increasing order quantities it is often possible to reduce deliveries inwards.  Many small businesses buy quantities far below their optimum economic order quantity.

Purchasing locally can also cut delivery emissions.  Local suppliers may appear to be more expensive than national firms but the local firm may be more likely to be willing to discuss an individual discount.

Encourage customers to combine orders through by making a clear delivery charge, preferably one that does not rise proportionally to order value.