BONN (dpa-AFX) - Deutsche Post has called for every parcel service provider to disclose the average greenhouse gas emissions of its shipments in the future. Such an obligation 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 the Deutsche Presse-Agentur. 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 of 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 as to how this should be put into concrete terms.

If such a labeling obligation were to actually come about, it would be a tailwind for Swiss Post. 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 footprint. The company says it has around 23,000 electric vans in use, which is much more than its competitors.

Until now, consumers have had no overview of the CO2 emissions per parcel when ordering online. In the future, that could change: Consumers would be able to read during the ordering process how many grams of CO2 are released on average when each provider ships parcels.

The Bundestag reacted in different ways to the Post proposal: Sebastian Roloff of the SPD was positive, while Reinhard Houben of the FDP expressed skepticism. A spokesman for Hermes, a postal competitor, rejected the labeling requirement demanded by Deutsche Post as "not sensible."/wdw/DP/zb