CSR programs are not led but merely guided by achieving your EcoVadis label or ISO14001 audit. It is not something that can live within your organization by sending over an SLA or asking your clients to offset your emissions.

CSR has to be adopted within an organization by each layer. Gosselin, being an asset-based mover with trucks across Europe, has quite a large scope 1, direct carbon footprint. The emissions are inherent to the business, being in logistics. The effort to improve those by using new technologies has to come from within the organization, steered by a high-level vision embedded into the mission.

The awareness and curiosity to look for new alternatives can start small with notes about lights, recycling, all the way to having a very successful yearly Gosselin green week and a River Clean-up (851 kg in total collected by our offices!) or even ‘leasing’ a bicycle through Gosselin. A recently launched ‘idea box’ allowed us to distil 57 ideas about saving energy! So, luckily, there is still much room for improvement.

Historically, Gosselin has not been very “vocal” about their impressive solutions that positively impact all aspects of ESG. The biggest eye-opener for me when I joined Gosselin four years ago, is the strategically located headquarters next to the Albert Canal, just outside Antwerp and its very important Port of Antwerp.

Gosselin uses waterways whenever possible to organize transport from as far as Germany and Switzerland for our means, using the position of our HQ near the water to organize direct transit to one of Europe’s major ports by barge. We save carbon emissions and make a social impact by saving many kilometres of traffic each year for the already congested highways around Antwerp.

On the operational moving side, last year we started to explore and offer the use of HVO (Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil) fuel. Using this fuel instead of regular can save up to 90% of carbon emissions. We hope to see a broader adoption by gas stations in Europe to make it even more viable.

However, we do see that the willingness to pay the premium is not broadly accepted yet on a client level. When offering this in multiple requested quotes, it was not a major deciding factor while the cost component is still significant.

Although the above helps, it doesn’t solve the social aspect: the shortage of truck drivers around Europe. For longer freight lanes between countries where we combine smaller shipments, we are experimenting with utilizing the rail system and our ‘swap body’ truck system to cope with the driver shortage. Not increasing warehouse handling of goods by using that same swap body on a local truck in the country of destination, is also very helpful and timesaving.

We are in active talks with asset-based partners to join us in helping us create a more sustainable service offering. I would be glad to have discussions with anyone interested at the next IAM Annual Meeting in Toronto.

In terms of software, we utilize and analyse the data of all our pan-European offices and combine smaller shipments within Europe and overseas by having full transparency throughout the footprint. Again, we save lots of empty truck or container loads, and splitting the charges and emissions for sea freight among customers makes it a more attractive service offering.

Any software that adds value on multiple sides of the business is explored. Reducing carbon emissions or hours in traffic while providing a more flexible client experience by doing virtual surveys is a perfect example that grew explosively due to the covid restrictions. The next objectives will be digitizing the historical package of paperwork from one partner to another and trying to digitally integrate that data flow together between movers.

Personally, two things triggered a different mindset for me regarding Sustainability. In the past, I was getting increasingly annoyed by the greenwashing of bigger corporations that didn’t “walk their talk”:

• I looked up a definition of ‘sustainable’: To save you a ChatGPT question, it is ‘Being able to meet present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’

• I read the book The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World.

This reading led me to start in my personal life, as a new parent since six months, with small changes of habit that might seem insignificant but do keep me in the right mindset.

On a professional level, this led to ‘acting locally’ as one’s influence on the outside world is limited. It’s a continuous cycle, asking yourself the question, “is this a viable and sustained option for the next ‘period’?” I like to believe that we are on the right path, but a wise colleague once said: we got to walk faster!