An award-winning East Yorkshire start-up has partnered with University of Hull to develop a new online tool to help deliveries go green.
The brainchild of Elloughton’s Paul Needler – ‘the accidental entrepreneur’ who won the Innovation and Technology Award at the Hull Live Business Awards 2021 – IParcelBox is a smart residential parcel delivery locker, providing a time-saving solution to missed courier calls.
With increasing online purchases seen as ecommerce evolves – accerelated massively by the pandemic when we were home to colect – environmental concerns are now being studied. Having established the technology, now rolling out, the surveyor who spent much of his working life in London before returning north to develop his patented product, was keen to find out whether delivery to door or a pick-up point was more sustainable, avoiding repeat calls.
A carbon mapping of e-commerce deliveries has been created, with a calculator which gives both retailers and customers a fair and unbiased comparison of the footprint of different options, enabling buyers to make informed decisions as to which delivery method is the greenest.
Mr Needler said: “It’s great that consumers will finally have access to a simple tool they can use to make informed decisions about how to minimise the emissions associated with parcel deliveries, backed up with EU-funded academic research.
“For a large proportion of the population where collection involves either a dedicated vehicle journey or an extra leg to an existing trip, they may be surprised to find that at-home delivery to a secure location such as iParcelBox could be the greenest option.”
He has seen how courier companies are encouraging customers to get their parcels delivered to local hubs, such as pick-up points or lockers, enabling them to claim lower emissions for the last leg of the delivery process. However, depending on the location, such claims of environmental benefits ignore the fact that the customer will still have to collect. This could involve a further journey if not within a short distance – a particular issue for out-of-town online-shoppers for whom walking, cycling or public transport may not be an option.
Mr Needler knew that the Aura Innovation Centre (AIC) could help support small businesses to accelerate their low carbon innovations into commercialisation, so got in touch to see whether their idea was eligible for support and funding.
He added: “The-commerce industry has previously suffered from a lack of reliable information for eco-conscious customers to use when considering how they get parcels delivered. This new tool will deliver accurate, unbiased data to give consumers information on which of the available delivery options will be best for the planet. This should help customers make an informed decision when it comes to home delivery, and could even start to cause behavioural change – something which can only be good for sustainability.”
To deliver, AIC matched IParcelBox up with the University of Hull Business School’s logistics and supply chain expert Dr Sushma Kumari, who leads a masters course in the subject.
Dave Dawson, innovation manager at the AIC, said: “The University of Hull has world-class expertise in logistics, so when Paul got in touch I knew there’d be academics who’d love to get their hands on such an innovative and fascinating project. We were able to secure funding for the project, which paid for the researchers’ time, and the result has seen this fantastic online tool. Given the continued growth of online shopping, the potential for benefits to lowering emissions on deliveries could be a big contribution to meeting net zero targets.”
IParcelBox technology allows customers to monitor and control the secure and weatherproof drop-box from their smartphone, allowing them to securely receive parcels when they’re not home or can’t get to the door. The myparcel carbon calculator tool is now available for industry and customers here.
