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Is 24,000 kilometers environmentally friendly?

Sind 24.000 Kilometer umweltfreundlich?
Short and sweet:
  • The FLSK products are transported up to 24,000 kilometers from China to Munich by ship and train.

  • Used cooking oil replaces dirty ship fuel and reduces CO2 emissions to zero.

  • In the future, we will offset train transport emissions through climate protection projects.

It will take several weeks for your FLSK product to arrive. On their long journey to Munich, FLSK and muki cover up to 24,000 kilometers. Does that really have to be the case? At the moment we can't avoid this long distance. The reason is that our products are manufactured in Zhejiang Province/China. But what does the long transport route mean for the environment?

By ship and train to Munich

To get goods from A to B, there are various means of transport to choose from: plane, truck, ship or train. If you look at the climate-damaging CO2 emissions*, ships perform best here - directly followed by train transport. Trucks and especially flight logistics are far behind**. That's why we transport half of our products to Germany by ship and half by train. A small portion of air freight remains. If we have to deliver quickly, in exceptional cases we resort to flying. But even though we predominantly use lower-emission means of transport, climate-damaging exhaust gases are emitted.

route

Crossing the oceans with old cooking oil

For the waterway we therefore work with the GoodShipping Initiative *** from Amsterdam. Instead of dirty ship diesel or heavy oil, the container ships are fueled with fuel based on old cooking oil****. As a result, our CO2 emissions have been reduced to zero since 2020. Container ships also emit soot particles and other pollutants. These are also reduced completely or to a significant extent by the innovative replacement.

“CO2-neutral” rail transport

There is currently no way to directly reduce emissions for container trains. The transport route is almost completely electrified, but the electricity is supplied by the countries it passes through. The proportion of green electricity in these countries is low: the longest route runs through Russia with a green electricity proportion of just 18 percent (2019) . In addition, the maintenance of the long railway line and container trains consumes further energy. We will therefore offset the resulting CO2 emissions through certified climate protection projects from 2020. You can find out how we approach the whole thing in our article on the topic of CO2 footprint .

Our transport mission: Sea is less

At just under 7 percent, the logistics sector only accounts for a fraction of our corporate emissions. Nevertheless, we want to get better.

Since we have a direct influence on fuel usage on waterways, we have now increased our share of ship transport to 98% . A step to stimulate clean container shipping together with the GoodShipping Initiative. In doing so, we show that there are sensible alternatives to dirty ship fuel.

Update 2022

By using biofuel oil, we were able to collectively save 37.59 tons of CO2 through sea freight transport in 2021. The GoodShipping Initiative has now confirmed this joint reduction of CO2 to us.

To the certificate .

* Whenever we talk about CO2, it is CO 2 e. In addition to CO2, methane and nitrous oxide also act as greenhouse gases - but in different forms. The conversion into CO 2 equivalents, or CO 2 e for short, creates a standardization of the climate impact.
** You can find background information on the CO2 emissions of various types of transport here, for example.

*** The cover photo shows Janne from the GoodShipping Initiative refueling a container ship with environmentally friendly biofuel.

**** GoodShipping mainly uses biofuels based on old cooking oil. In addition, research is being carried out into how other waste products can be used for fuel production. One possibility, for example, is tall oil as a waste product from the paper industry.