How does a restaurant group actually reduce the emissions of its deliveries?

By Muhamed Selmani, Founder17 August 2026

Two things change the emissions of a delivery round: the vehicle, and the number of vehicle-miles spent per drop. The vehicle is a booking question — ask what class and what emissions standard is specified for your route, and whether an electric refrigerated van can be booked for it in London. The miles are a routing question, and route density decides them. Any figure you are handed should arrive with its method attached, or it is not a measurement.

Two levers, and only one of them is the van

Most conversations about greener delivery are conversations about vehicles, because a vehicle is a thing you can photograph. The arithmetic is less flattering. What a round emits is a function of what the vehicle burns and how far it travels for each drop it makes, and a food business usually has more influence over the second than the first.

That changes who you should be asking. The vehicle is chosen by whoever owns it. The miles per drop are decided by how your rounds are built — a conversation you can have today about routes you already run.

What London already requires of a van

Before anything voluntary there is a floor, set by Transport for London, and it is worth knowing exactly: a lot of low-emission marketing is a restatement of the legal minimum.

The London schemes that decide what a van costs to run

Ultra Low Emission Zone. London-wide since 29 August 2023, across all 32 boroughs and the City of London. A non-compliant van up to 3.5 tonnes pays £12.50 a day, at all hours on every day except Christmas Day. The standards are Euro 6 diesel and Euro 4 petrol; a compliant vehicle pays nothing.
Congestion charge. Central zone only, £18 a day since 2 January 2026, charged 07:00 to 18:00 Monday to Friday and 12:00 to 18:00 at weekends and on bank holidays. It applies to every vehicle in the zone whatever it emits, so it is a traffic charge rather than an environmental one.
Cleaner Vehicle Discount. The 100% discount ended on 25 December 2025. From 2 January 2026 an electric van on Auto Pay receives a 50% discount on the congestion charge, and an electric car 25%. So an electric vehicle changes a central round's cost as well as its emissions.
Low Emission Zone. A separate, older scheme across Greater London with its own standards and charges, and vans over 1.205 tonnes unladen are in scope. A vehicle's position under it is worth confirming rather than inferring from its ULEZ status.
Direct Vision Standard. A permit scheme for heavy goods vehicles over 12 tonnes, at a minimum rating of 3 stars since 28 October 2024. A van sits below the threshold and outside the scheme.

The electric refrigerated van question

An electric refrigerated van is a van whose battery drives the wheels. Whether that same battery also drives the refrigeration is a question about the specific vehicle, and it is the one a specification sheet is quietest about: that second draw decides whether the van holds your round or only a demonstration route.

Then there is who is promising it. A contractor that owns no vehicles cannot promise an electric fleet, because there is no fleet. That is Fleetable's position: capacity is contracted route by route, so the vehicle is a booking question. If a provider that subcontracts shows you photographs of vans, ask whose they are. The rest of the questions are operational rather than ethical.

What to ask before accepting one on a route

Usable range with the refrigeration running for a whole shift, in London traffic, in the coldest and hottest weeks.
Payload once the battery is accounted for, and whether it still carries your heaviest day.
Where it charges, how long that takes, and whether charging collides with your loading window.
What happens to the load if the vehicle cannot finish the round, and who carries that cost.
Whether it is available for your route on your days, or available in principle.

Route density is the lever that is actually yours

The number that moves without anybody buying a vehicle is vehicle-miles per drop. A round serving more drops over the same miles moves each drop for fewer miles, and driving is where the fuel goes.

This is where the asset-light case is honest and where it stops. A contractor buying capacity per route books the class a round needs rather than running whatever it owns, so there are no vans on your cost line standing idle between jobs. It is a real efficiency, not a measurement.

What to change first

Put sites sharing a street or a postcode on the same round rather than on two rounds run by the same supplier.
Count the vehicles arriving at one site in a week, across all your suppliers. Six deliveries a day is six sets of miles and door time.
Move the drop that forces a detour to a day the round already passes it.
Ask whether an empty return leg can carry a collection. Those miles are already being driven.
Resist the smaller-van instinct. A single small drop buys a whole vehicle whatever its size, so the answer is density.

Worked example

Miles per drop as density rises

Assumptions

Illustrative arithmetic, not a measurement of any real round.
Assume one round of 24 miles start to finish, including the return leg.
Assume the added drops sit on the existing line of the route, so the sequence changes and the distance does not, with no change of vehicle class.

Working

24 miles across 4 drops is 6 miles per drop.
24 miles across 8 drops is 3 miles per drop.
24 miles across 12 drops is 2 miles per drop.

So: Nothing about the vehicle changed. The curve falls steeply then flattens, which is why consolidating the first few drops onto a round that already passes is worth more than the last few — and why an honest low-emission plan starts with the route list, not the vehicle list.

Carbon reporting: what a number has to arrive with

A delivery carried out by a third party is not fuel you buy, so where it lands in your carbon reporting is a question for whoever owns that reporting rather than for your carrier. Ask them which category a contracted delivery falls under in the standard you report against, and what a supplier has to hand over for you to fill it. Whatever the answer, you are asking a supplier for data about your own footprint, and the method has to be one you can defend.

Four things to require of any delivery emissions figure

The method. Which published accounting method or set of emissions factors was used, named, and applied to what activity data.
The activity data. Distance, vehicle class, fuel type and load, per route and per period, rather than one total for the account.
The boundary. Loaded leg only, or the empty return leg and the run to the collection point as well. This choice usually moves the number more than the vehicle does.
The author. Who calculated it, and whether anybody outside the company that benefits from it has checked the working.

What Fleetable can and cannot give you here

Fleetable does not produce a carbon report. There is no such product, and saying otherwise would invent one. What is available is the data underneath a report — the route, the mileage and the vehicle class — because a route is priced per mile with every cost shown, so the mileage is already itemised.

Food miles, and better numbers to count

Food miles is the metric most likely to appear in a sustainability brief and least likely to survive contact with a logistics team. It counts distance and nothing else: not how full the vehicle was, not how many drops shared the journey. No share-of-footprint figure appears here: nothing in the research behind this piece establishes one, and a figure quoted without its method is a choice dressed as a fact.

Numbers you can count yourself

Vehicle-miles per drop on each of your rounds.
Deliveries per site per week, and how many of them could share a vehicle.
The proportion of your rounds that return empty.
Vehicle class per route, and whether it matches the load or a habit.

What a green logistics partner in London should answer

Sustainability in delivery is three questions wearing one coat: a vehicle question you mostly do not control, a routing question you largely do, and a reporting question that stands or falls on method.

Five questions, and the one that matters most

Which vehicle class and emissions standard is specified for my route, and how is that confirmed?
Can a lower-emission or electric vehicle be booked for this route, and on which days is it genuinely available?
Which zone charges will my route incur, and are they passed through at cost on their own lines?
What is the empty return mileage across my rounds, and what would it take to fill it?
What are you not able to give me?

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FAQ

Questions, answered.

Can we specify an electric refrigerated van for our route?

Ask, and expect an answer about availability rather than about a fleet. Fleetable owns no vehicles and contracts capacity route by route, so the class and standard are set when the route is priced and confirmed against the vehicle booked for it. Where a class cannot be held reliably on your days, you are told that rather than sold it.

Is a ULEZ-compliant refrigerated van a low-emission van?

It is a van meeting Transport for London's minimum standard for driving in the zone without paying the daily charge: Euro 6 for diesel, Euro 4 for petrol. That is a legal floor rather than an environmental credential, and it says nothing about how much a compliant vehicle emits. A supplier presenting ULEZ compliance as a sustainability policy is presenting the minimum condition of driving in London as an achievement.

Do you provide carbon reporting?

No. Fleetable does not produce a carbon report. What it can give you is the data underneath one — the route, the mileage and the vehicle class — because a route is priced per mile with every cost shown. Apply a published method to that yourself and the number is yours, with a method you can defend.

Does the Direct Vision Standard affect our deliveries?

Only where a lorry is doing them. Transport for London's Direct Vision Standard and its HGV Safety Permit apply to heavy goods vehicles over 12 tonnes, with a minimum rating of 3 stars since 28 October 2024. A van sits far below the threshold and outside the scheme, so it is a question about the vehicle on your route rather than about the operator.

Start

Not a sales call. A diagnosis.

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