Dutch Logistics Service Providers and Sustainable Physical Distribution: Searching for Focus

As environmental concerns becoming increasingly important to logistics service providers, the question arises as to how they can achieve sustainable physical distribution practices while surviving the severe competition in freight transport. This issue is further complicated by the pressures from the many different shippers involved, public expectations and regulating authorities. Therefore, achieving sustainable physical distribution is definitely a wicked problem. In order to understand how logistics service providers attempt to tackle these problems, a research study was conducted amongst logistics service providers who are frontrunners in implementing sustainability practices and who participate in the Lean and Green program, to promote sustainability within the logistic chain in the Netherlands. Companies willing to participate in this award scheme, must achieve the goal of reducing their CO2 production by 20% within a 5-year-period. The transport market is very competitive and sustainability is just one of the many logistical concerns that service providers must solve. Our research shows that the logistics service providers participating in the Lean and Green scheme preferred solutions which involved cooperative strategies over – third-parties solutions.