Page 7 - Al-Rashed Newsletter December 19

SHIPPING WORLD
SHIPPING NEWS

$5BN FUND UNVEILED FOR CLIMATE-FRIENDLY SHIPPING
A group of ship owners have announced plans for a $5bn (£3.8bn) fund to design
zero-emissions vessels.They says $2 (£1.50) should be levied on every tonne of
ships' fuel - to support research into clean engines.Shipping creates about 3% of the
emissions that are over-heating the climate - equivalent to all of Germany's CO2.
Environmentalists welcomed the proposal but also described it as too little, too
late.They say it's outrageous that international shipping pays no fuel taxes, unlike
lorry owners.Green groups argue that if ships were taxed at the same level as
lorries, 70 times more cash for developing clean engines would be raised in Europe
alone.Around 250m tonnes of fuel a year are burned by ships. The International
Chamber of Shipping (ICS) says that 90% of owners globally are behind the $2 levy
on fuel.

FREE SHIPPING IS QUIETLY CHANGING THE
DESIGN OF YOUR FAVORITE PRODUCTS

The rise of e-commerce has not only rewritten the rules of shipping and delivery; it
has also changed how packaging and products themselves are designed. Once
upon a time, products were designed to stand out from the competition on shelves.
Now, they’re being optimized for shipping, whether they’re shrunk down to fit into
smaller, cheaper packaging or they forgo packaging altogether.
Shipping goods directly to consumers is more expensive than shipping in bulk to
stores, and businesses obviously want to keep costs down.

TINY PRODUCTS, JUST ADD WATER: In their conventional form, many
household products are mostly composed of water—something that comes out of
faucets in every household. Encouraging consumers to add that water at home
drastically decreases the shipping volume and weight of many household products.
Some examples of this innovative approach on the mass market today
are Drinkfinity, a Pepsi brand that sells flavored water pods; Blueland, which sells
cleaning supplies in tablet form; and various Unilever products.

PACKAGING-LESS PACKAGING: Not every product can be recycled using widely
available recycling methods. Companies are stepping up by shipping used products
or packaging back to the supplier to have them take care of it, which however
increases number of shipping movements. Some companies are trying to do away
with single-use packaging altogether by using reusable materials for packaging.

A SINGLE PACKAGE TO RULE THEM ALL: Many boxes are packed in other,
standard-sized shipping boxes, often because companies like Amazon has specific
demands for its highly automated logistics system.

WHAT’S NEXT: Products and their packaging have been adapted for home delivery
by the consumer-packaged-goods industries because they managed to design their
way around the problem of weight and volume, driven by the incentive of spending
less money on shipping. In 10 years, many of the products you use today will surely
be completely unrecognizable and the ways you get it, will blow your mind.

Source: FASTCOMPANY.COM, BBC.COM