Retail Giants Or Ocean Freight Polluters Or Both?


Written by Stephanie Castaneda

Retail Giants Or Ocean Freight Polluters Or Both?

What better way to call the attention of companies than to drag their name through the dirt? Two environmental groups, Pacific Environment and Stand.earth, demanded these retail giants to achieve emission-free ocean shipping by 2030, contractually agree to ship their goods on zero-emission vessels, and reject “false solutions” like liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a sustainable way to get goods to market.

The environmental groups also demand there to be a pollution fee and that would be used towards funding new low-emission technologies. Given how demand skyrocketed during the pandemic, “ship lines have no financial excuse to steer clear of investments, such as the addition of wind-harnessing technologies to existing ships, that could reduce carbon emissions by 30% per voyage”. The retail companies with the largest maritime import emissions is as follows:

  1. Walmart 6. Chiquita 11. LG
  2. Ashley 7. IKEA 12. Red Bull
  3. Target 8. Amazon 13. Family Dollar
  4. Dole 9. Samsung 14. Williams-Sonoma
  5. Home Depot 10. Nike 15. Lowes

The groups claimed that transparency in emissions reporting is badly lacking, noting they could verify just 20% of the shipments that moved on behalf of the 15 companies cited. They urged lawmakers and regulators to require companies to disclose all of their shipping affiliations when submitting required import and export data.

Source: Freightwaves.com