Most logistics businesses in Nigeria already hold the information needed to work out their delivery emissions, they just hold it in fuel receipts, waybills, dispatch WhatsApp groups and the memory of the drivers rather than in a report. The good news is that the calculation itself is not complicated, and once you have done it for one month you will find the second month takes a fraction of the time.
Start with fuel, because you already pay for it
The most reliable way to estimate emissions from your own vehicles is to start from the fuel they burn. Every litre of diesel releases roughly 2.68 kg of carbon dioxide when it is burned in the engine, and petrol releases about 2.3 kg per litre. Those are the tailpipe figures. International methods such as the GLEC Framework and ISO 14083 also ask you to count the emissions created in producing and transporting the fuel before it reaches your tank, which lifts diesel to somewhere around 3.2 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent per litre on a full well-to-wheel basis.
So if a van burns 12 litres of diesel on a day's round, the day's emissions come to about 38 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent. Multiply that across your fleet and across a month and you have a figure your customers, lenders and auditors can work with.
When you do not have fuel records
Plenty of operators pay drivers a daily allowance and never see a receipt, and plenty of businesses hire riders and vans by the trip. In that case you can work from distance instead. You need three things for each trip: where it started, where it ended, and what kind of vehicle did it. From the route distance and an average fuel consumption for that vehicle type you can estimate the litres used, and from there the emissions. It is less precise than real fuel data, so be honest about that in anything you publish, but it is a recognised approach and far better than leaving the number blank.
Sharing the total across deliveries
A single figure for the day is useful, but most customers want to know the emissions for their own goods. The standard way to split a vehicle's emissions is by tonne-kilometres, which is simply the weight carried multiplied by the distance it travelled. A parcel business that cannot weigh every item can split by number of parcels instead, as long as it says so.
Using the van example above, if that 38 kg covered 60 parcels of similar size, each parcel carries a little over 0.6 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent. A customer who sent ten of those parcels can be told their share was around 6 kg.
A short checklist to get going
Keep a simple vehicle register with the type of each vehicle and the fuel it uses. Record fuel bought per vehicle, or the start and end point of each trip if fuel is not tracked. Note the load carried, in kilograms if you can, or in parcels if you cannot. Then once a month add it all up, apply the emission factors, and write down which method you used so the next person can repeat it.
Why it is worth doing now
Larger companies in Nigeria are moving towards mandatory sustainability reporting, and the emissions from the trucks, vans and bikes that move their goods sit in their supply chain figures. The operators who can hand over a clear, well-explained number will be easier to buy from than the ones who cannot. Getting the habit in place now, while the stakes are low, is far easier than scrambling when a large customer asks for the data with a deadline attached.
SMG works with logistics businesses on exactly this kind of transport data. If you would like a second pair of eyes on your first calculation, get in touch through our contact page.