Our initiatives to gradually reduce carbon emissions

Our Approach to Environmental Protection

At GLS, we care about our effect on the world around us. Every parcel and its related logistics and transport processes have an impact on natural resources and cause carbon emissions. We want to continue our mission of connecting people around the world while reducing our impact on the environment. Therefore, climate and environmental protection are central components of our sustainability activities.

We launched our group-wide environmental strategy, Climate Protect, with the aim of maximising our impact on environmental protection and ensuring that knowledge and efforts are shared and executed across our entire international network.

At the end of 2023, GLS Group committed to setting near-term and long-term science-based targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across its operations in line with the Science Based Targets initiative. Read more about our commitment here .

Climate Protect measures

We pool our resources and expertise to implement measures to continuously reduce our carbon emissions. This includes both emissions from our transport operations as well as emissions from our site operations, such as purchased electricity or heat for our buildings.

Please refer to the separate webpage of your GLS country for further details on the steps taken in this direction.

  • Electrifying our fleet
    We are electrifying our fleet. Different electric vehicles are used within the Group, such as electric vans, bikes and trucks. In addition, we also test alternative fuels and hydrogen.
  • Implementing alternative parcel delivery solutions
    We install parcel lockers and open parcel shops, deliver parcels with walkers and test alternative delivery options.
  • Usage of renewable energy
    We are increasingly purchasing renewable electricity and installing solar panels on our buildings. Thus, 80% of GLS-operated sites in Europe already use renewable electricity.
  • Future-proofing our buildings
    We are converting fossil heating systems to electric heat pumps to reduce carbon emissions of our buildings and we are installing charging infrastructure at our sites.

Local investments supporting environmental protection

Our initiatives to compensate carbon emissions

Compensation projects supported by GLS

On top of our initiatives to gradually reduce carbon emissions, some GLS companies are concomitantly also compensating for carbon emissions at national level. We work with ClimatePartner (Munich, Germany) on multiple certified climate protection projects to voluntarily offset carbon emissions. For further information on the compensation program, please click here .