Monday, 02 February 2009 16:49 Written by Keith Shay 0 Comments

Does location matter when selecting an order fulfillment center for publishers?
When a publisher considers a book fulfillment partner, location can have a significant impact on the environment. Distance from the publisher’s customers will determine the size of their carbon footprint.

Our third post on this topic focuses on reducing your company’s carbon footprint.

Before you can learn how to reduce your carbon footprint, you have to know what this means. A carbon footprint is essentially the measure of the impact a company’s activities have on the environment and how this impact affects climate change. The size of a company’s footprint correlates with the amount of greenhouse gasses they produce throughout the day by burning fossil fuels for transportation, electricity, running machinery, etc.

This is why using a warehousing and fulfillment company in Chicago is so much more efficient than using one in New York or Los Angeles The greater the distance the books must be transported, the greater your company’s carbon footprint.

As the chart in our last post illustrated, Ware-Pak’s central location enables your shipments to reach the entire U.S. population within five days or less and more than 80 percent of the U.S. within three days. Getting your products to market in fewer transit days not only saves money, it results in fewer greenhouse emissions and a lower overall carbon footprint.

Here’s an example…
If a publisher’s books need to get to a retailer in Oklahoma City, how many miles would they need to travel?

1,451 miles from New York
1,331 miles from Los Angeles
796 miles from Chicago

Shipping from Ware-Pak’s Chicago location is by far the shortest distance, resulting in a 40% smaller carbon footprint than Los Angeles and 45% less than shipping from New York.