UPS yesterday released a new, on-demand shipping pickup service targeted at small to medium-sized businesses that promises to make shipping more efficient and to cut emissions along the supply chain.

The company's "Smart Pickup" system gives customers without hefty shipping needs the ability to schedule daily shipments, but only have a UPS driver arrive when a package is waiting to be shipped, rather than come every day regardless of the customer's needs.

This simple shift will have significant impacts, the company predicted. By eliminating unnecessary pickup stops, UPS will cut its miles traveled by 8 million per year, saving 790,000 gallons of fuel and preventing the emissions of roughly 7,800 metric tons of CO2.

And UPS is framing the tool as a way for SMEs to focus on their Scope 3 emissions, those that come from the supply chain rather than direct operations.

{related_content}"Smart Pickup has an interesting aspect to it," explained Dave Barnes, UPS's Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President, in an event in New York yesterday. "Customers have said to us that 'you're not our direct carbon, you're our indirect carbon,' and now they're asking us, 'what can you do to help us manage our carbon?'"

The system is automated and transparent; for customers using a UPS WorldShip scanning and shipping system, simply scanning a package that needs to be picked up will send the notice to UPS's driver that it is ready for retrieval.

"Before UPS Smart Pickup, UPS would often arrive at a customer's location only to discover that the customer had no packages for pickup that day," Barnes said. "For the first time, a UPS service integrates the company's operational and customer-facing technology to eliminate unnecessary stops."

Although the event in New York emphasized how Smart Pickup will help smaller firms track their complete carbon impacts, the move will have a much more immediate and useful impact on UPS's own footprint.

More information about Smart Pickup is online at UPS.com/PickupOptions; for more details about how UPS uses technology to boost efficience and reduce waste and greenhouse gas emissions, read our coverage of the company's daylong event here: "How UPS Brings Green IT to the World."