We all know green warehousing is good for the environment.
Yet, it's also fantastic for your business. First, sustainability impacts your brand image. Customers of all levels, from consumers to businesses, look for eco-friendly brands when they choose who to work with. Going green improves customer conversion and brand loyalty.
Sustainability also saves you money.
At its core, sustainability is all about making the most of what you have. That means improving efficiency throughout your operation and slashing waste. Both of these reduce unnecessary expenditures and maximize productivity, improving your margins. Ultimately, there are few, if any, downsides to going green.
Read on to learn four ways to make your warehouse eco-friendly and reduce your carbon footprint.
The first place to begin reducing your carbon footprint is your energy consumption.
Energy efficiency is an overlooked source of waste in many warehouses. It’s easy to miss because it involves many parts of your operation that you consider just “the cost of doing business.” However, these small changes make big differences in your bottom line.
Here are three areas to begin with when working towards more efficient energy use.
We often think of lighting management in our homes, but that rarely translates to our work.
Yet, lighting can account for as much as two-thirds of your energy costs. When a room isn't occupied, turn off the light. Your facility only needs lighting in the spaces that are currently in use, which rarely encompasses the whole storage footprint. Look for ways to reduce light consumption, like installing motion sensors.
When work requires lights, some are more efficient than others.
Consider installing LED bulbs, tubes, or fixtures in your facility. These lights are 35% more energy-efficient than incandescent bulbs, last five to seven times longer, and provide better lighting. As a result, they lower your monthly bill and create a safer working environment.
The bottom line is only light spaces when you need to and choose energy-efficient options when you do.
Your HVAC system is another hidden power sink.
Warehouses are often cavernous spaces that are notoriously hard to temperature-regulate. That puts a lot of strain on your HVAC system. While heating and cooling are necessary for product storage, you can reduce the strain by installing warehouse ceiling fans.
These mix air more thoroughly, creating an even temperature distribution throughout the warehouse.
When choosing a warehouse fan, look for high-volume, low-speed fans. These are more energy-efficient but still effectively distribute hot or cold air throughout your facility. That way, your HVAC blower doesn’t have to labor all day.
Fans are a low-energy solution to warehouse temperature management.
Energy isn’t just what comes out of the wall outlet.
Warehouse energy efficiency refers to all energy produced and used by your warehouse. That includes the fuel used by IC forklifts and other combustion-powered machinery. That fuel is necessary for the machine to run, but more fuel-efficient alternatives exist.
Electric forklifts are a prime example.
Electric forklifts are more energy efficient than IC forklifts and produce zero emissions. They protect the environment, your warehouse air quality, and your budget by eliminating the need for fossil fuels. Instead, high-efficiency chargers power your fleet’s battery packs, keeping them running all day at a lower cost.
Many electric forklifts pay for themselves over their practical lifetime.
Packaging has a huge effect on your supply chain sustainability.
Sustainable packaging is a holistic approach to shipping. It focuses on the materials from which the packaging is manufactured, the expense and impact of shipping, and what happens to packaging when it reaches the end of its life. For example, packaging sourced from local providers uses less fuel getting to your warehouse and saves you money on shipping fees.
Consequently, it is better for the environment and your budget.
The first thing to consider is eco-friendly packaging materials.
Customers notice these materials right away, and so will your expense report. Eco-friendly materials are biodegradable, compostable, or made of reclaimed materials. They are also generally more space efficient and frequently lighter, saving you on shipping costs.
These materials have no lasting environmental impact or can be easily recycled.
While the varieties of sustainable packaging increase all the time, there are currently seven types to investigate for your business.
Maximizing your process efficiency is an often-overlooked but critical step in sustainable warehousing.
Inefficient processes create waste. That waste comes in the form of time, labor, energy, and materials. All of which cost you money.
Continually improving your process maximizes efficiency and virtually eliminates budget-killing waste.
Automation is a growing trend in green warehousing.
These machines perform repetitive tasks quickly, efficiently, and without error. Each task then takes slightly less time, costs a little less to perform, and doesn’t suffer from the expense of human error. While these savings are small for each transaction, the sheer volume adds up to savings so significant that they often pay for the equipment in as little as 18 months.
As an added bonus, automation is more energy efficient.
Robots don't require light to work, and they are not as sensitive to temperature changes as humans. This allows you to cut down on lighting and HVAC costs in robot-only environments such as cube storage automation.
Automation doesn't replace workers but reduces the number of tedious, repetitive, error-prone tasks required.
Beyond investing in new equipment and fancy machines, optimizing your warehouse layout is an easy way to get started with sustainable warehousing.
Analyze your workflow and look for areas of inefficiency. This could mean moving the fastest-selling products to the front of the warehouse, grouping commonly sold goods together, or using dynamic storage options. Whatever the solution, track the flow of products from the moment they arrive at your facility to the second they leave. Look for delays and bottlenecks, as well as ways to prevent these inefficiencies.
Simply streamlining your process increases your productivity and reduces waste.
Some waste is inevitable.
No matter how careful you are about eliminating inefficiency, there will always be some waste. However, what you do with that waste matters. Just because a thing is no longer helpful in your process doesn’t mean it is useless.
Reconsider “valueless goods” and see how they can be repurposed or reclaimed.
The obvious answer is recycling.
Recycling is more than putting your soda can in the blue bin. Many waste products are recyclable. Metal shavings from milling are recyclable. Cardboard packaging is recyclable. Even forklift batteries are recyclable. Recycling each of these makes manufacturing replacements less expensive in the long run.
You'll have to examine your process to know which waste items are recyclable. Still, odds are you're tossing away perfectly good material.
Finally, renewable energy is often wasted.
Many companies confine their idea of energy to what comes out of the wall socket. However, there are plenty of sources of reclaimable energy all around us. Solar panels are one such example. Warehouse solar panels use free solar energy to help power your facility, reducing or eliminating your energy bill. Even regenerative braking is a source of renewable power. Every time your electric forklift brakes, forward momentum transforms into electrical charge used to power the battery.
Recapturing this power reduces wasted energy and prevents overspending on electric bills.
Like optimization, warehouse sustainability isn’t a plug-and-play solution.
It takes time and analysis to discover which technologies and processes are right for your business. Yet, just like warehouse optimization, we're here to help. SST has the experience and expertise you need to make your warehouse and processes sustainable.
To learn more about green warehousing or how our team can help, contact us online or visit one of our locations throughout Georgia and Florida.
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Further Reading
Warehouse Automation and Robotics Trends for 2025
4 Things To Consider When Converting to Electric Forklifts
Toyota Lean Management: A Lean Approach to Facility Layout