Computing giant cuts carbon from the supply chain by increasing the use of coastal shipping
Computing giant Hewlett-Packard says it has slashed carbon emissions from the supply chain of one of its divisions by increasing the use of coastal shipping.
The company’s Imaging and Printing Group, or IPG, launched a program to cut emissions by re-evaluating transport mode choice for domestic deliveries.
The new model sees product land closer to customers using sea transport rather than rail and road.
“We conducted a study with our worldwide office at the end of our third quarter in July and found that there has been a dramatic decrease in our environmental footprint since we have implemented the new supply chain model,” says Richard Bailey, Vice President of IPG South Pacific.
Local carbon emissions for product sourced by sea have been cut by 41 percent after revising delivery methods, the company reports.
HP worked with local supply chain partners DHL, Star Track Express and regionally across the organisation to develop a new model that reduces the total carbon emitted to move freight from the HP finished goods plants to end customers in Australia.
Previously all IPG hardware was being delivered nationally from HP’s central distribution office in Sydney, with 40 percent of all supplies landing in Fremantle and then being delivered via rail to customers nationally.
About 40 percent of hardware from Sydney was also delivered to Melbourne by truck. Previous truck deliveries from the national office were not optimised to use larger trucks and HP was emitting 6,400 tonnes of CO2 annually in 2008.
Under the new supply chain model, HP changed its port of entry from Fremantle to Melbourne and Sydney, which increases the distance travelled by sea and decreases rail and truck distances travelled to deliver goods.
HP has also implemented a freight optimisation project, which optimises land freight delivery by using trucks with higher storage capacity.
This year, emissions from freight delivery were down to 3,776 tonnes per annum.
“The new supply chain model has saved over 2,600 tonnes of CO2 emitted by HP Australia over the last year, which equates to 21.6 acres of forest preserved from deforestation or 66,666 trees grown for 10 years from seedlings,” Bailey says.
“This has been the largest HP CO2 saving project…for 2009.”
HP has set a goal of reducing sea freight carbon emissions a further 20 percent by 2013.