What do we mean by “zero emission delivery”?
All of our fleet has zero tailpipe emissions – we have no petrol or diesel powered vehicles.
But we do generate particulates from our e-bike, e-trike and e-van brakes. All moving vehicles do when they brake; the bigger the vehicle the more particulates they produce.
Our e-fleet is powered by Ecotricity which uses renewable energy sources such as wind & solar.
Fleet usage
Our preference is to deliver using pedal power via our e-assist bikes & trikes wherever possible.
Our cargo bikes & trikes are on the road for well over 100 hours per week.
Typically the van is on the road for around 20 hours a week. We only use our e-van for big loads that will not fit in our biggest trike, and we do our best to structure our deliveries so we are making good use of its capacity. In terms of usable space the van is always at least 50% full, which is equivalent to the capacity of two of our trikes.
In our view an e-van is an important part of our fleet to ensure we can provide scalable solutions for our customers.
On the ground
Let’s look at the practical implications of ZED’s existence in Waltham Forest.
We provide a book distribution service for Waltham Forest Council’s libraries; this used to done via a diesel van. We use the e-van on Mondays and Wednesdays to service the larger libraries, and the ones which are furthest away from our Leyton Midland base. On Monday we fill the van with crates of books, which we drop off at 6 libraries, and from each library we collect crates of books to be distributed to other libraries. On Wednesday mornings we use the van to cover the northernmost libraries in Hale End & Chingford, which means the van finishes close to Organiclea’s Hawkswood site (see below). All the other library collections & drops are done by cargo bike & trike.
On Wednesday afternoons we use our van to bring over a tonne of fruit and vegetables from Organiclea’s Chingford nursery to the southern half of the borough. Most of this is decanted into cargo bikes and trikes for delivery to 25 drop off points by 5pm. This would be hugely challenging logistically without the e-van … we’d need at least twice as many bikes and riders, would struggle to complete the deliveries in time, and the cost to our client would be unaffordable.
