Hats Off to Recipients
of EPA SmartWay Award

esponsible. Sustainable. Stewardship. Efficient. Clean.

Hmm, doesn’t sound very sexy, does it? Perhaps not, but it sums up the environmental efforts of the supply chain world. Through the responsible stewardship of companies like yours, fuel-efficient, emis-sions-reducing technologies are enabling sustainability initiatives that result in a cleaner and healthier environment for us all.

This month, the Environmental

Protection Agency recognized 37 companies and
associations for their green transportation pro-
grams. The ceremony took place Oct. 6 at the
Annual Management Conference & Exhibit of the
American Trucking Associations, in Las Vegas. We
decided to run this as our cover story because what
the EPA is attempting to do, and the response from
logistics professionals, is important to you.
Through its Smart Way Transportation Partner-
ship, the agency is committed to promoting envi-
ronmentally cleaner, more fuel-efficient
transportation options in the freight industry. That’s
no small task given the amount of energy the logis-
tics portion of the supply chain consumes: 35 billion
gallons of diesel each year just by trucks and loco-
motives alone. (By next year, partnership officials
hope that the airfreight and ocean transportation
industries can be folded into the program as well.)
In addition, in each of the next two years, Smart-
Way wants to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 33 to
66 million metric tons, and oxides of nitrogen emis-
sions by up to 200,000 tons. That’s about 150 billion
barrels of oil a year, according to the agency, or
about the same as taking as many as 12 million cars
off the road each year.

The recipients of the Fourth Annual EPA SmartWay Transportation Partnership Excellence Award R

ranged from carriers to retailers and from brokers to advocacy organizations. Their common bond is twofold: first, each one’s activities touch on freight transportation in some way; second, each has made a commitment to either use fuel-efficient vehicles or other equipment that reduces emissions, or they are working with as many environmentally friendly carriers and partners as they can.

By the way, the Smart Way pro-

gram should not be confused with the cap-and-trade legislation that squeaked through the U.S. House in the summer and may or may not muster Senate approval. That effort, which allows polluters to buy emissions credits from cleaner companies, has been vilified by many manufacturers and other business interests as an onerous tax, while others criticize it as insufficiently tough on pollution. Nor should Smart Way be mistaken for another effort launched by the Obama Administration this month to regulate greenhouse emissions as part of a climate bill this year.

Smart Way is purely voluntary, but in just five or six years the number of members has grown from about 50 to more than 1,000. Any member can benefit from Smart Way’s knowledge base of best practices and tracking and monitoring models and tools. Fuel-use assessments and employee training programs are available. Members can take advantage of certain equipment financing, and a web site can direct applicants to private lenders who may offer attractive financing plans. And, of course, there are networking opportunities.

We feel the 37 recipients of this year’s Smart Way Excellence Award exemplify the efforts each of us should make to be environmentally responsible, and we congratulate them.