Energy Use & Climate Change
Transportation & Logistics
EMC is reducing energy consumption and material waste in the transport of our goods around the world. Internally, our Global Sustainable Logistics Workgroup works with others to analyze the drivers of greenhouse gas emissions in EMC Logistics, prioritize impact areas and reduce our environmental footprint. Externally, we engage our logistics carriers to increase efficiency and adopt environmentally-friendly practices.
Improving our Logistics Operations Every Day
We believe that efficiency, environmental benefit, and cost savings can go hand in hand. In each of our global locations, our teams are evaluating packaging, processes, modes of transit and consolidation to identify opportunities for improvement. In 2011, we executed projects that avoided over 7,000 metric tons of CO2e emissions and saved more than $3.5 million. Active interest and participation from our various business units and recent acquisitions has allowed us to broadly implement better practices, such as implementing “no idling” policies for logistics partners’ vehicles at our facilities.
In 2011, we began to consolidate freight shipped in the same lanes but managed by different organizations within EMC. Consolidation resulted in higher capacity utilization, improved transit times, reduced freight costs, and environmental benefits. We also expanded efficiencies developed in previous years such as our Merge-In-Transit centers, where customer deliveries and returns are consolidated and bundled to maximize truck utilization and minimize miles travelled. In 2011, the Ireland and Netherlands Logistics Centres consolidated 14 logistics operations supporting the international market.
The Logistics organization also drives projects in sustainable packaging, reducing both material use and emissions. To learn more, visit Packaging.
Partnering with our Carriers to Drive Change
Sustainability has become an integral part of the business relationship with our logistics carriers. We require major carriers to provide CO2 emissions reporting on the freight they carry for EMC. Carriers are also asked to present their companies’ sustainability programs and goals during quarterly business reviews. In the United States, we require our carriers to join the SmartWay Transport Partnership, a program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which works with carriers to increase efficiency and reduce GHG emissions. More than 98 percent of our domestic freight volume is moved using SmartWay-certified providers.
We collaborate with our carriers to optimize routes, leveraging their logistics networks and process capabilities to meet EMC’s requirements for cost, timeliness, and reduced environmental impact, and share strategies and GHG accounting methodologies with our logistics partners through quarterly business reviews and in meetings with their sustainability teams. Knowledge transfer is beneficial and crucial to advancing industry standards.
Measuring our Impact
EMC’s Global Logistics Operations generated approximately 157,207 MT CO2e in 2011. This number is estimated using the GHG emissions reports from our logistics partners directly relating to EMC freight movement. We collected emissions reports that represented 89% of our 2011 logistics spend, and projected our total emissions based on this percentage of reporting. These emissions include inbound and outbound, interplant, and customer service logistics relating directly to EMC freight movement. We encourage partners to report based on their own fleets’ emissions factors to more accurately gauge performance. We also set standards to quantify the environmental impact of sustainable logistics projects that will help us both measure our progress and identify projects with the highest potential to reduce GHG emissions.
Meeting Challenges Head On
A key challenge has been to aggregate our logistics GHG data due to the different reporting formats used by our many carriers worldwide. In 2012, we will collaborate with carriers to develop a common template for reporting environmental impact data. This will reduce complexity, as well as time and effort required by our vendors, and enable us to more accurately compare carrier performance and prioritize opportunities for improvement.
Another key challenge is balancing the business need for low inventory and high availability with the sustainability drive for low emission transport modes. In 2012, we will expand internal discussions to identify strategic opportunities to use sea or rail transport rather than air for certain transport lanes or products.
Our objective is to position EMC Logistics to succeed in shaping a low carbon future by continually integrating sustainability practices into strategy development and every day operations, and by collaborating with logistics partners to achieve reductions. We will continue to report our progress, launch projects to make incremental improvements, and aspire for big changes to significantly reduce our impact worldwide.