Persson’s green vision
With the hot topic of climate change now growing in prominence throughout political and social agendas across the world, Chris Dolan quizzed Ingemar Persson, secretary general at PostEurop, the association of 48 European public postal operators, on the green aspirations of the postal industry. There is a constant stream of stories filtering through a variety of news outlets detailing different postal organisations’ efforts to be greener. Whether that is an investment in environmentally friendly technologies, the implementation of lower emission vehicles, or the development of in-house sustainability reports, are the posts doing enough? “I guess we never can say ‘doing enough’. There are constantly new solutions coming up that have less of an impact on the climate, but certainly many operators are doing a lot,” said Persson.
He added: “In PostEurop, we launched our Green House Gas Reduction Programme in July 2007, aimed at reducing carbon emissions by 10% until 2012. We got some 10-12 operators signing up from the start and then further six to eight after some time. Most of those operators already had quite advanced programmes in place regarding the environment.” Persson also stated that although the majority of the organisations initially came from western Europe, the last few months has seen “a break through with a six to eight eastern European operators joining, saying they want to grow their business in a responsible and sustainable way.” There is no doubt that the Programme is a positive step. It seems that the sector has opened its eyes to the fact that it can make a difference – but where can they improve?
“It is a big difference between the more experienced operators and the others,” said Persson, “the more advanced ones have integrated environmental issues into their strategies. It is not only about transport, heating of buildings, etc. For some time we have developed what we call the ‘Value Chain Approach’, together with the stakeholders to the postal operators, envelope producers, printers, the paper industry, the forest industry, etc. We produced a ‘facts pack’ with arguments for the use of paper.”
Persson cited TNT’s ‘Planet Me’ programme as “a good example of a holistic perspective”, stating that the initiative does not just focus on business activities “but also their employees and how they can live a more environmentally friendly life when not at work. I think the more holistic approach is the way to success, meaning the whole value chain to be taken into account. Customers to the Posts nowadays are asking about the total environmental impact of using the postal operators and the postal medium. That includes not only the postal operators themselves, but also the suppliers, etc.”
The secretary general claims that the next challenge will be to get the eastern European operators on board. He said: “The western European operators are dealing with reductions of their emissions whilst the eastern Europeans are increasing their business, which is good, but do not yet include environmental issues in their strategies. Therefore I am extremely pleased to see operators from Poland, Romania, Turkey, and the Poste Serpske in Bosnia Herzegovina, mentioning some, joining the work for a better climate.”
Persson states that it is very important for the industry to take climate change seriously. Not only is it about the survival of the planet, but also the sector has an opportunity to be a good example to others. Furthermore, he said a green programme is now integral to a successful business: “Those who cannot tell their customers and other stakeholders they do everything they can to contribute to the environment will sooner or later go out of business.”
It seems that the implementation of a successful sustainable programme has grown in importance, and that the posts must continue to make headways into their own green targets, to benefit the planet – and themselves.
