BONN (dpa-AFX) - Germany's parcel companies should be obliged, in the view of Deutsche Post, to present their climate footprint per parcel in a way that is close to the consumer. Such a requirement would make sense in order to "make the CO2 emissions of their parcels transparent to people," the responsible business unit manager at Deutsche Post, Ole Nordhoff, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur in Bonn. He referred to animal husbandry classes for meat products and the Nutri-Score nutrition logo, which evaluates information on sugar, fat and salt and ranks them on a scale from A to E. "We can well imagine something comparable in the parcel industry."

Swiss Post's demand for an environmental label relates to the postal law reform, which is to be decided by the end of this year. In a key points paper, the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology had recently proposed, rather vaguely, to create "transparency and comparability for users" on the subject of CO2 footprints. Now Swiss Post is making a push on how this should be put into concrete terms.

Until now, consumers have had no overview of the carbon dioxide emissions per package when ordering online. In the future, that could change: Consumers would be able to see during the ordering process how many grams of CO2 are released on average when sending parcels, depending on the provider. This could influence the choice of shipper.

A labeling obligation would be a tailwind for Swiss Post. After all, the Bonn-based company has invested significantly more in electromobility than its competitors Hermes, DPD and GLS and therefore has a relatively good greenhouse gas balance. By its own account, the company has around 23,000 electric transporters in use, which is much more than its competitors.

The CO2 figures per parcel should be calculated according to clearly defined standards so that "not every company can make creative claims to create a climate-friendly impression," says Nordhoff, who is responsible for product management, marketing and branches at Post & Paket Deutschland.

Mixed reactions are coming from the Bundestag. Sebastian Roloff, an SPD member of parliament, thinks the Post proposal is "interesting." "Anything that focuses attention on more climate protection in parcel delivery is worth considering." The specifics, he said, are still open. "But there should be more transparency for consumers."

Reinhard Houben of the FDP, on the other hand, has a "disturbing feeling" about the postal proposal. He fears that the market leader Deutsche Post DHL will gain a clear advantage over its smaller competitors through climate labeling. "If the big guy gets bigger and bigger and the small guys get smaller and smaller, that's bad for competition and therefore bad for consumers."

Houben doubts that the carbon footprint of the different companies would actually be comparable one-to-one. Due to the integrated delivery, the Post would have an advantage over pure parcel companies anyway. This means that in some places, postal employees deliver both letters and parcels - which the liberal fears will distort the CO2 parcel calculation.

And what does the competition say? A Hermes spokesman welcomes more transparency in principle. He believes that information on the CO2 footprint should be included in the companies' sustainability reports. However, the mandatory labeling demanded by Deutsche Post is

is "not sensible," however. Nutri-Score is based on a measurement for food products and suggests a level of transparency "that cannot be applied to parcels," says the Hermes spokesman. It is not currently possible to make a concrete forecast for an individual parcel before it passes through the logistics process.

In fact, the question of how much carbon dioxide is released during a parcel shipment is a difficult one. Deutsche Post states that between 400 and 500 grams are emitted per DHL parcel in Germany, which is estimated to be at least 30 percent less than competitors. However, the gram figure is only an average value. How much CO2 a parcel really causes depends on a variety of factors - such as the distance of the route and whether an electric vehicle is used for the last mile or a combustion engine transporter.

The capacity utilization of the transporters and the energy use of logistics locations also play a role, the Hermes spokesman points out. All of these are "parameters that simply cannot be determined during the checkout process in the web store. If, on the other hand, average values were taken, these would be "only of limited significance" and could not be converted into a real CO2 score. After all, in the case of foodstuffs, it is possible to say in advance exactly what the contents are. It's a different story with parcel delivery. The Biek association, which represents the interests of postal competitors, expressed a similar view to Hermes.

That postal competitors shake their heads at the Bonn proposal is hardly surprising. But even among environmentalists, there is no great enthusiasm. "The real problem with booming online retailing is not shipping in Germany, but the climate pollution and waste of resources caused by the manufacture of the product itself," says Viola Wohlgemuth of Greenpeace.

Fast-moving products leave a huge carbon footprint. If consumers were only given an overview of the average greenhouse gas emissions of packages, they would in most cases click on the service provider with the lowest CO2 emissions and then have a good feeling. But that would be wrong, Wohlgemuth says. "What's good for the climate is sustainable consumption - in other words, few packages with products that you use for a long time and that stay in circulation instead of being thrown away after a short time."/wdw/DP/zb