Delivery Is About to Get a Whole Lot Greener (And You’ll Love It)

This development isn’t about eliminating home delivery. Instead, it’s about smartly balancing it with alternatives that reduce congestion and emissions while offering more convenience and reliability. Here are the main reasons why that’s so important: 

• Last-mile delivery accounts for a high share of urban pollution despite short distances.
• Growing volumes and inefficiencies cause rising congestion and emissions from home delivery.
• The EU is implementing policies to build PUDO networks and support zero-emission urban logistics.
• Studies show shifting deliveries to PUDO can cut CO₂ emissions by up to two-thirds in cities.
• Color and Code’s Delivery Gateway connects merchants and customers to broad PUDO options for flexible, greener delivery.

Last Mile Delivery: The Hidden Culprit Behind Urban Pollution

Last-mile delivery looks small in the transport ecosystem, but it packs a disproportionate pollution punch. The OECD defines last-mile delivery as “the transportation of goods such as packages, groceries, prepared meals, and bulky deliveries from the final transportation hub” to their destination, such as homes or drop-off points. 

The problem is that urban freight (which includes last-mile delivery) accounts for only about 10–15% of vehicle kilometres but makes up roughly 25% of urban transport CO₂ emissions. According to a study from the University of Michigan, last-mile delivery can cause 4-5 times higher emissions than long-haul transportation (20-30 grams of CO₂ equivalent per parcel-kilometer compared to 80-150 grams CO₂e per parcel-kilometer). This is due to constant stops, lower vehicle utilization, and inefficiencies such as idling and congestion.

What’s even more important, the OECD expects that if nothing changes in how we deliver products, delivery vehicles could increase by over 60% by 2030, worsening congestion, emissions, and safety, and threatening city livability. 

PUDO locations, however, consolidate deliveries to fewer stops, promoting denser routes and often enabling greener transport, such as cargo bikes, and cutting emissions.​

Why Home Delivery is Struggling, and How PUDO Is the Smarter Alternative

Home delivery's old model struggles today. During the pandemic, we saw a massive boom in deliveries and e-commerce, but back then, home delivery was not just about convenience. Often, it was the only way to buy products. But with many back at offices part-time or full-time, they can't hang around waiting for unpredictable delivery windows. Drivers face intense pressure, too: tight quotas, long hours, and often insufficient pay, leading to stressed routes and missed deliveries. 

These days, vans clog urban streets, doubling parking efforts and driving multiple fruitless trips when customers aren’t home. Each failed delivery not only wastes resources but also adds to pollution, traffic woes, and lowers customer satisfaction. Not every city is the same, but in some places, such as Berlin, these problems started to show. (It’s enough to look at DHL’s 1.5 rating on TrustPilot.)

However, the problems also lead to spearheading solutions. PUDO options—lockers, parcel shops—are widely used in dense urban areas, providing predictable, convenient alternatives perfectly suited for hybrid lifestyles. Customers pick up parcels on their own schedules, reducing failed delivery attempts and easing logistical pressure. 

The EU’s Bold Move: How New Policies Are Transforming Urban Logistics

The EU is also tackling these challenges on a political level. Ambitious climate and mobility targets include zero-emission urban logistics by 2030. These might heavily support PUDO infrastructure, micro-hubs, and electrification. The EU also launched a 3.5-year Horizon Project, called URBANE, which targets “novel, sustainable, safe, resilient and effective last-mile delivery solutions, combining green automated vehicles and shared space utilisation models.” 

They are already running pilot projects in cities like Helsinki, Bologna, Valladolid, and Thessaloniki, and using the experiences gathered there, they will develop new recommendations and potentially legislation to further green delivery goals. 

In line with that, merchants will also face tighter regulations and growing consumer demand for green delivery, but this shift is an opportunity: PUDO helps meet climate goals while improving customer convenience and reducing operational costs. Early adopters benefit by aligning with the future regulatory landscape and attracting eco-conscious buyers.

Color and Code’s Delivery Gateway: Making PUDO Easy, Efficient, and Green

Color and Code is actively shaping this new delivery landscape. Recognizing delivery as part of the brand experience, we’re developing “Delivery Gateway”, an easy-to-implement Shopify plug-in that simplifies access to diverse PUDO options. Piloting in Hungary, it connects merchants to multiple locker and pick-up point providers through a single interface, making it easy to offer customers flexible, sustainable choices at checkout.

For shoppers, that means clear, convenient PUDO choices near home, work, or their daily routes. Carriers benefit from more predictable deliveries and denser routes while cities see reduced congestion and emissions. Delivery Gateway empowers merchants to create sustainable, customer-friendly e-commerce experiences aligned with evolving urban logistics.

With e-commerce growing and last-mile delivery crucial to customer satisfaction, embracing PUDO, supported by innovative digital solutions and policy incentives, is the future. Delivery is changing, and it's a change set to benefit us all.

How Delivery Gateway Simplifies the Lives of Merchants and Customers alike?

Delivery Gateway tackles one of the biggest challenges in e-commerce logistics today: fragmentation. As we all know, every carrier operates its own locker and drop-off point network. But more importantly, in the background, they all have their own APIs, technical documentation, services, and tracking logic. These all add complexity to implementing a new carrier. Merchants who want to offer broad PUDO coverage must integrate multiple systems, maintain several APIs, and constantly monitor changes. This is not only complicated but slow and costly as well.

Delivery Gateway takes care of all these issues, and combines providers’ systems into a single, unified integration, giving merchants access to a growing ecosystem of lockers, parcel shops, and collection points across Europe. Instead of months of development work and ongoing maintenance, brands can activate new networks with a click. This dramatically reduces engineering overhead and shortens time-to-market.

The integration makes the user experience for customers better as well. The plugin provides a seamless, map-based checkout experience that automatically suggests nearby PUDO locations along their daily routes. They can pick the best solution for them, without worrying about delivery windows and different providers. This convenience improves conversion rates, elevates user experience, and builds brand loyalty. Benefits that every merchant strives for.

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