Globally, there’s a growing concern about companies’ ESG (environment, social and governance) practices and sustainability, meaning their impact on the environment, their relationship with employees, society at large or political institutions, and finally their internal rules and practices. ESG is an idea that appeared to resolve issues like economic inequality, environmental impacts, corporate power and influence, labor concerns and more. It should be embedded into companies’ cultures and operations, to help resolve the issues aforementioned.

Allocating capital for ESG initiatives helps companies in the following areas:

• • Long-Term Value Creation

• • Risk Mitigation

• • Stakeholders’ Expectations

• • Employee Engagement and Retention

• • Innovation and Efficiency

• • Social Responsibility and Impact

• • Future-Proofing the Business

• • Regulatory Preparedness

• • Corporate Governance and Transparency

With 30% of green house gas (GHG) emissions coming from all modes of transportation, companies operating in that sector would have the biggest positive impact on ESG by working on the environmental aspect. De-carbonization of transportation will help reduce GHG emissions, with the goal of either becoming carbon-neutral or net-zero. Avalon CSC helps in achieving these goals by recommending and implementing solutions into day-to-day operations.

Here are some of those actions:

1. 1. Analyze the supply chain to understand where companies have the biggest impact on GHG emissions.
   2. Analyze fuel efficiency and recommend the use of alternative fuels/technologies.
   3. Analyze fleet maintenance practices and recommendation of maintenance schedules.
   4. Optimize routing and logistics preventing unnecessary movement.
   5. Implement a transportation management system (TMS) to obtain better data. A TMS can optimize routes, consolidate loads, analyze cost and transit times of different modes of transport, analyze and reduce idle time, dynamically plan and execute, measure and report carbon footprint, and finally, enables collaboration among supply chain partners.
   6. Implement the right KPI’s to measure and manage.