The freight forwarding industry serves as a crucial bridge between importers, exporters, and shipping and transportation companies. By facilitating the smooth movement of goods across borders, freight forwarders play a vital role in global trade. However, this industry also significantly impacts environmental stability due to the emission of harmful gases, carbon footprints, waste generation, and improper disposal practices, such as dumping waste into the soil. These activities contribute to environmental degradation and pose serious threats to natural ecosystems. Therefore, it is essential for the freight forwarding industry to adopt green initiatives and sustainable practices to minimize its environmental impact and promote long-term ecological balance. This study attempts exploratory research on green logistics practices and the challenges of their implementation in the case of freight forwarding industry in Hyderabad, India. Using primary research with 150 employees in freight forwarding companies, the paper explores the levels of awareness and adoption, as well as challenges to green logistics management. The study tested the following five hypotheses: educational gaps, economic barriers, customer demand, industry structure, and heterogeneity. Using convenience random sampling and quantitative data analysis, the results show that employees have considerable gaps in education and awareness, as only 28.0% of employees are also very familiar with green logistics concepts. The major barriers inhibiting the widescale adoption included high upfront costs (74.7%), education and awareness challenges (65.3%), customer expectations for competitive pricing (62.7%), and extended installation time (60.0%) All five hypotheses were confirmed with chi-square statistics from 19.76 to 45.72 (p<0.05). We highlight that the diversity of company sizes within the freight forwarding industry results in a spectrum of behavior when it comes to adopting green practices. Micro-level enterprises are facing much more significant challenges (58.0%) than higher-level firms at these conditions, coupled with highly uneven resource distribution (60.7%) Despite these barriers, the majority of respondents acknowledge the significance of green logistics concerning his/her company for operational efficiency (93.3%) and competitive advantage (86.7%). The results highlight a vital relationship where comprehensive education programs, targeted financial support and collaborative efforts from stakeholders can help highlight the more sustainable environmental approach to this activity.