Earth Day: The Importance of Emissions Reduction in Supply Chains

Earth Day is celebrated on 22 April each year and has a vital message—we must act and innovate now. Our collective responsibility as environmental stewards is to protect Earth’s natural resources, communities, and climate for future generations. There’s no time to waste.

That’s a commitment we put front and center at GEODIS. As a forward-looking, conscientious business, we’re investing in strategies, technologies, and infrastructure to significantly lower greenhouse gasses (GHG). There’s a definite need here—more than 80% of emissions associated with consumer goods come from the supply chain.

Companies like GEODIS must take the lead. Not only are we reducing our clients’ supply chain emissions, we’ll help to meet new environmental regulations, support CSR goals, and reassure consumers about sustainability.

That can help to put a smile on your face for Earth Day.

GEODIS Global is reducing emissions across our operations

Emissions reduction isn’t a nice to have anymore. Businesses need to shift their operations, outlook, and culture to include social responsibility in everything they do. The supply chain cannot be overlooked. As our Global CEO, Marie-Christine Lombard, says:

“Global freight and passenger transportation makes up for more than a quarter of the world’s carbon emissions. The system has to change. As a transport and logistics company, GEODIS plays a significant role in creating a sustainable future.”

We’re making excellent progress. Our global initiatives include:

• Managing freight demand growth through supply chain restructuring, network optimization, localization, and nearshoring.
• Combining transport modes in a smart way to increase the use of rail, short-sea shipping, inland waterways, and multimodal optimization.
• Sharing and maximizing the use of fleets and assets to optimize and consolidate loads, reduce empty moves, and increase storage density.
• Increasing energy efficiency for fleets and assets through cleaner and more efficient technologies, high-capacity vehicles, efficient transport, and regular maintenance.
• Lowering emissions from our fleets and assets by using low-carbon solutions including electric, hybrids, solar, wind, and biofuels. 

This is driving some impressive results:

• EcoVadis, the largest and most trusted provider of business sustainability ratings, has awarded the gold medal to the GEODIS Group for its high level of CSR engagement.
• GEODIS is among the top 5% of the most advanced companies for CSR, out of 20,000 companies assessed.  
• Over 90 percent of our customers are satisfied that we’re taking the right actions to reduce our carbon footprint, monitor and report on our CO2 emissions, and drive performance that strongly supports diversity, ethics, and the environment. 
• EcoVadis rates us in the top 5% of all suppliers for emissions reduction, including a score of 90/100 for environmental performance.

GEODIS in Americas is reducing emissions for our US and Canadian clients

The global GEODIS Group is making great strides in environmental stewardship. Here at GEODIS in the Americas, we’re also driving forward our own emissions reduction initiatives, particularly around our warehousing and facilities. We’ve gathered together everything we’re working on in an ebook that will be available soon. 

The ebook will detail how we’re reducing emissions and protecting the environment—here are some early highlights:

Waste-to-Energy

GEODIS has partnered with Covanta, a Waste-to-Energy (WTE) provider for our WTE needs. WTE takes non-hazardous waste—otherwise destined for landfill—and combusts it, generating steam for electricity production. WTE facilities reduce greenhouse gases and play an important role in addressing climate change.

Energy-efficient facilities and Green certification

GEODIS has a large warehouse facilities footprint within the US. We encourage employees to form “Green Teams” at each facility to drive forward environmental initiatives. These include:

• Eco-driven warehouse design and operations.
• Investing in eco-design, packaging, reuse, and recycling initiatives and technologies. 
• Implementing local, employee-run Green Teams at each facility to mitigate and lower environmental impacts.  
• Green Site Certification programs to recognize facilities that have achieved strong environmental results. 

GEODIS Green Teams

GEODIS has dedicated “Green Teams” at each of our facilities that promote our environmental programs. They conduct waste and recycling assessments twice yearly and implement recycling initiatives to prevent waste from going to landfills.

Their main responsibilities are to mitigate and lower our impact on the environment and to contribute to the fight against climate change through:

• Improving our carbon efficiency, including energy efficiency.
• Optimizing the use of natural resources by applying the “reduce, reuse, recycle” approach.
• Decreasing pollutant and harmful emissions for the people and the ecosystem.

Emission reduction initiatives for transportation

Although we’re currently focused on warehouse emissions reduction, GEODIS Americas is also driving emissions reduction across several transportation areas. These include optimized route planning, using low-emission intermodal transport, and partnering with carriers in our network who can offer alternative fuel and electric truck options.  

Eco-design carbon accounting and forecasting

One of our main client-facing emissions initiatives is our new eco-design carbon accounting tool. This tool allows us to forecast the total facilities emissions for the life of any client’s contract logistics solution.

Reduce warehouse-related emissions by up to 15%

These programs are making a difference—both for GEODIS—and, crucially, for you. Our analysis shows that simply moving your logistics services to GEODIS can reduce your contract logistics-related warehouse emissions by up to 15%, compared to taking no action.

Best of all? Our environmental emissions reductions are provided as part of our standard contract logistics services. We’ll continue incorporating best practices into our solutions and pass the benefits on to our clients.

This Earth Day, make the switch and discover how GEODIS can help you build a more sustainable future. Contact us to learn more!