Royal Mail Group employees lead the way in carbon offsetting

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://www.onrec.com/newsstories/19920.asp

15/01/2008
Woodland conservation charity The Woodland Trust is challenging businesses to follow Royal Mail Group’s example in enabling its people to offset their carbon emissions by planting trees.

Already 130 employees from Royal Mail, Post Office Ltd and Parcelforce Worldwide have signed up to the newly launched scheme to give money direct from their wage packets to the Woodland Trust, which will enable the charity to plant and look after 2,500 trees in its 1,000 UK woods.

To find out how many trees the employees would have to plant to offset their annual carbon footprint and to get tips about how to reduce their emissions they used a revolutionary new carbon calculator called Ollie.

This calculator, developed by Royal Mail, asks employees about their home energy usage, as well as car and air travel before calculating how many trees will need to be planted to help offset their carbon footprints.

This is the first time a company’s employees have ever been given the opportunity to offset their residual carbon emissions tax free through their wage packets to a charity which specialises in UK woodland creation.

Now Royal Mail has launched the scheme internally the company has gifted the carbon calculator to the Woodland Trust, which is challenging other businesses to follow Royal Mail’s example and offer their employees the opportunity to help offset their carbon footprints.

Clare Allen, Head of Corporate Partnerships at the Woodland Trust, said: “The excellent start this scheme has had with Royal Mail shows its employees are eager to do their bit to help the environment and reduce their carbon emissions. The Woodland Trust would like to thank them for their support and Royal Mail for gifting this carbon calculator to the charity. We further would like to challenge other businesses to offer this carbon offsetting opportunity to their staff. “

“Planting trees creates vital habitats for more species than any other, it also traps pollution, generates oxygen, stabilises soil and forms a stunning part of our landscape.

And yet woods are scarce, with only 12% of the UK wooded, compared to 46% on average in Europe. While it will take decades for the trees to absorb and so offset carbon emission created today, the fact that you get a multiple package of environmental benefits makes our offset product worth buying on many grounds. We are aware tree planting is not the solution to climate change. But we do believe it can play a role once people have reduced and continued to reduce their carbon footprints.â€

[axeman]

horse stable door if you ask me jusst how green are rm after all they condone the use of private vehicles which in turn offsets there carbon foot print by i wonder how many decimal points ?

[dvbuk55]

Dr Martin Blake, Head of Sustainability at Royal Mail Group - what?

How much are we paying this clown? Sustaining what precisely? The 50,000 that have signed up will be almost matched by the 40,000 that are due to go - peeing in the wind springs to mind. I'm all for more woodland but let the landowners pay. Every tree we plant the South Americans are lopping 20 down.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Dr Martin Blake, Head of Sustainability at Royal Mail Group - what?

Dr Martin Blake, Head of Sustainability, Royal Mail Group.

With a background in sustainability and change management, Dr Martin Blake is well placed to oversee the carbon reduction initiatives of the mammoth Royal Mail Group. With 100% of sites running on green electricity and almost half of its delivery vehicle fleet running on biofuel, the organisation has made great strides. Blake spoke to Mel Poluck about how the organisation is further reducing its emissions and gave a glimpse into the Group's upcoming low carbon projects.

What is the scale of the Royal Mail carbon footprint?

"The total carbon emission is 880,000 tonnes - that's enough to fill Wembley Stadium 102 times! I'll give you some frightening statistics - we're the largest single employer in the UK. We employ 0.6% of the UK working population. We've got one of the largest fleets of trucks and vans - 35,000 - and we cover two million miles a night. In terms of logistics, we have 110,000 points of entry into the system, ie letterboxes, and we transport 85 million pieces of mail and deliver to 27 million addresses. So if you think about the randomness of that, from the Isles of Scilly to Benbecula in The Western Isles in Scotland, it's a huge logistical operation and the environmental footprint associated with that is huge. My job is to measure that in terms of carbon."

What is the key feature of your sustainability agenda?

"Over the last few years we've put together a holistic integrated programme comprised of nine separate projects, to become carbon neutral by 2015. Our basic strategy is to focus purely on reducing, recycling, eliminating and avoiding; and driving carbon out of the business. We'll start offsetting in about 2011."

What low carbon services do you offer your customers?

"We have the 'green parcel' service; when customers send a parcel, they can elect for it to be 'green' and we offset it. We subsidise that. There is also the 'Responsible mail programme' for door-to-door mail that's not addressed. We work with the producers of the mail and look at paper, inks, collation, packaging, the whole lifecycle and offset the carbon using the Sustainable Forestry Initiative who work with indigenous forests in the UK."

What are you doing about the carbon emissions produced by Royal mail's large fleet?

"Some 90% of our carbon footprint comes from the fleet. We're looking at [introducing] electric vehicles - up to 20,000 of our vehicles could be replaced with electric. We've got to look at the business case. We've already bought two and we're working with [French postal service] La Poste, who use a lot of electric vehicles.

"We are currently fitting telemetry in 6,000 to 8,000 of our vehicles, meaning vehicles are linked to a 'black box' to record acceleration, braking, speeds and miles per gallon (MPG) figures and will create 10% fuel savings from that. If a driver is not driving environmentally appropriately, it's flagged up. You can financially reward the drivers who are doing well."

Do you use biodiesel in your fleet vehicles?

"We're using biodiesel in 47% of the fleet. But we're uncomfortable with some of the provenance of biodiesel. For example, palm oil from Brazil means forests are cleared to grow the oil and this then travels across the Atlantic; it's not sustainable at all. From a carbon perspective, you're better off not doing it. We have research underway on biofuel and biodiesel, so we have a solid strategic stance on biodiesel. We want to do what's right and we're taking time to do that through research."

What are you doing about reducing the part of your footprint produced by air mail delivery?

"There is an additional use of aircraft because of a 56 mile per hour restriction applied to our lorries and trucks - irrespective of whether they are on biofuel or not. We couldn't get mail from London to Edinburgh for a next day delivery. So we're introducing double decker trailers to carry more [air]mail. This will also get in excess of 100 articulated lorries off the road."

Does Royal mail Group have plans to introduce its own renewable energy sources?

"As far as electric power is concerned, we're looking to go into a long term project to secure renewable energy in the future. We'll work with a financier and put together a wind farm to produce energy for us then claim the additionality. We have just commissioned a wind turbine at a delivery office in Bootle."

What is the most challenging aspect of your work?

"The size and scale and amount of stakeholders. To get deployment in an organisation of this size and scale, we're dealing with change management and indeed risk management and performance management."

What is the key to a successful low carbon programme?

"At times it's a rollercoaster: you win some, you lose some. You can never be too wedded to [an idea]. The secret is engagement, engaging stakeholders so they own it. It's all led by people who are the main stakeholder in each area. This is absolutely not a prescriptive programme."

[dvbuk55]

Yep - money for old rope.

Tell me Martin what about the carbon foorprint of the 1000s of private cars on delivery?

"Over the last few years we've put together a holistic integrated programme comprised of nine separate projects, to become carbon neutral by 2015. Our basic strategy is to focus purely on reducing, recycling, eliminating and avoiding; and driving carbon out of the business. We'll start offsetting in about 2011."

He certainly talks the talk - pure bullshit.

[jemima]

He's a bit out of date on the biofuel issue. There's a process for making ethanol from rubbish.

(see http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/GM_ ... e_999.html)

"GM to make biofuel out of garbage

by Staff Writers
Detroit, Michigan (AFP) Jan 13, 2008
General Motors Corp. is planning on making biofuel with garbage at a cost of less than a dollar a gallon, the company's chief has said.
The US automaker has entered into a partnership with Illinois-based Coskata Inc. which has developed a way to make ethanol from practically any renewable source, including old tires and plant waste.

The process is a significant improvement over corn-base ethanol because it uses far less water and energy and does not divert food into fuel.

"We are very excited about what this breakthrough will mean to the viability of biofuels and, more importantly, to our ability to reduce dependence on petroleum," said Rick Wagoner, GM's chief executive officer, on Sunday.

GM, which was late in introducing gas-electric hybrids, is the industry leader in flex-fuel vehicles that can run on gasoline blended with up to 85 percent ethanol.

It is currently producing more than a million flex-fuel vehicles a year globally and is committed to making half its production flex-fuel by 2012.

It is also introducing 16 new hybrid vehicles over the next four years, including a plug-in hybrid which can run on electricity alone, and will soon have the world's largest fuel-cell test fleet when it delivers more than 100 Chevy Equinox fuel cell vehicles to customers in the United States, Europe and Japan.

But while these may be the vehicles of the future, flex-fuel is the best "interim" solution as it will take 12 years to replace most of the vehicles currently on the road, Wagoner told reporters at the Detroit auto show.

"There is no question in my mind that making ethanol more widely available is absolutely the most effective and environmentally sound solution," Wagoner said. "And it's one that can be acted on immediately."

Coskata's first pilot plant will be up and running in the fourth quarter of 2008 and the fuel will be used on GM test vehicles.

"We will have our first commercial-scale plant making 50 to 100 million gallons of ethanol running in 2011," said Coskata chief Bill Roe.

The prestigious Argonne National Laboratory analyzed Coskata's process and found it generates up to 7.7 times the amount of energy used and reduces CO2 emissions by up to 84 percent compared with a well-to-wheel analysis of gasoline.

The process also uses less than a gallon of water to make a gallon of ethanol compared to three gallons or more for other processes."

[sevenandseven]

This is a load of enviro-nonsense. They are only planting trees so they have a ready supply for the wooden heads of the next generation of managers.

[shelanda]

tell RM to turn off those poxy plasma screens spilling out propaganda to empty offices. being kept turned on 24 7......