Green vision
An insight from the The International Post Corporation (IPC) on the postal industry and environmental sustainability. The IPC represents 24 postal operators across Europe, the US and the Asia Pacific region. Its members employ some 2.4m people and deliver over 80% of global mail volumes, accounting for 330bn letters each year and 275m daily deliveries to households and businesses. IPC gives its members a platform to come together to share ideas and best practices and to collaborate to address issues relevant to the postal industry such as sustainability.
Carbon emissions are a significant issue for the postal industry, with the service provided by IPC’s members involving 600,000 vehicles and over 100,000 facilities.
In 2007, based on a recommendation from members, IPC took the initiative to embark on a programme to lead the industry towards a more sustainable way of doing business. This involved collaboration with its member posts and Maplecroft, a UK-based research and advisory company. This culminated in the launch of an environmental measurement and monitoring system (EMMS) for the postal industry in May 2008. The system provides the sector with a transparent, scientific, sector-specific carbon measurement and monitoring system based on the requirements of international best practice standards, such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, DJSI, FTSE4Good, ISO 14001, and current best practice from the corporate environment. It evaluates performance through the application of a scoring system that grades performance in ten carbon management proficiency areas and in key numeric carbon efficiency indicators.
IPC’s EMMS provides members with a way of measuring and benchmarking their initiatives and optimising their effectiveness. It can be used by all postal operators, regardless of size or what stage they are at in their environmental programmes. It was endorsed by IPC’s members and a pilot of the system was completed in December 2008 in which 16 member posts took part. Twenty members subsequently took part in its implementation, with the first round of reporting being finalised in September 2009, following third-party review by Maplecroft and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
The results were used to create the first postal sector environmental sustainability report which was presented at on 11 December 2009 at COP 15 in Copenhagen. This is the first time that a service sector has come together on a global level to create an environmental sustainability report for its industry.
The International Post Corporation is also leading the way as first services industry to announce an industry-wide target for CO2 reduction. IPC’s members taking part in the Environmental Measurement and Monitoring System (EMMS) initiative have announced a target to reduce their collective CO2 emissions by 20% by 2020 on 2008 levels. This translates into a reduction of 1.672m tonnes of CO2.
IPC is signatory to the UN Global Compact, and an organisational stakeholder with the Global Reporting Initiative. It also intends to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and is sharing information with the European Federation for Transport and Environment (T&E) and the European Environment Agency (EEA).
