The Inland Empire owes much of its success to transportation and warehousing. One of my responsibilities is to track industrial space as well as the transportation industry as a whole.
Something I have noticed is that consumers are beginning to "go green" and in the past 3-5 years the environmental movement has reached a tipping point and has entered the mainstream.
Industrial real estate can ignore this green movement at its own peril. The common conception is that industrial uses are dirty uses, that industrial space is more environmentally un-friendly than other land use types.
For certain types of industrial space (manufacturing in particular) this is the truth and it is hard to deny, the smokes stacks and waste runoff are a clear giveaway. Coal plants and paper mills are what pops into many peoples heads when I say that I work with industrial real estate, however such operations are few and far between in the Inland Empire.
Warehouses are pretty easy to make environmentally friendly. ProLogis (a major warehouse developer & owner) recently decided to make only LEED certified warehouses. Most of the buildings they were constructing were LEED compliant already, they just didn't advertise that fact entirely and only minor changes were necessary to meet the LEED certified standard.
Some of these changes include:
- Reducing energy consumption through addition of solar panels, green roofing options and skylights
- Water conservation through native landscaping & low flow fixtures in the office portion of the warehouse.
- Reduce parking spaces to the minimum zoning requirements
- Incorporate ventilation and outdoor air delivery to reduce HVAC energy consumption.
These changes are a benefit to the tenant since it lowers the operating costs of the warehouse.
Not only should the warehouse be of environmental concern but how the goods within the warehouse are delivered and manufactured should also be considered. The EPA has designed a number of plans that distributors can join in order to lower their carbon footprint.
They include:
There are several non-for-profit groups that also exist in order to help distributors help the environment.
In addition to these public and private groups, simple common sense can go a long way in reducing distribution costs while also helping to save the environment.
- Reduction in packaging usage through order cubing
- Selection of recyclable packaging materials
- Using reusable containers/storage equipment
- Implementing order consolidation (decreasing unused space on trucks)
- Reducing fork truck hours
- Replacing gas-powered fork lifts with fuel efficient options
- Route optimization (reducing empty miles)
- Increasing cube utilization of equipment
- Contracting with providers/carriers that support Green initiatives
- Reducing truck idle time
- Migration to more aerodynamic trucks
- Replacing diesel-powered trucks with alternative fuels
- Implementation of alternative power sources for refrigerated trailers
Distributors, in modernizing their logistics networks to be more lean and efficient, will adopt these green initiatives because they are more efficient and lean. Distributors will be led, through the choices made by their green conscious consumers and also with consideration for their bottom line to adopt green principals, as if guided by an invisible green thumb.
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