Brazil Post joins IPC’s global carbon-cutting initiative

Brazil Post – Correios – has become the first Latin American postal operator to sign up to the global environmental monitoring initiative run by the International Postal Corporation (IPC). The Post and Telegraph Company president Wagner Pinheiro de Oliveira added his moniker to an agreement with IPC president Herbert-Michael Zapf yesterday, at the UN’s Rio +20 sustainability summit, pledging to monitor and reduce his firm’s carbon emissions.

Brussels-based IPC said the signing was a “significant milestone” for its initiative, which now counts 24 postal operators on board around the world.

The initiative requires members to monitor and report their annual carbon dioxide emissions, and aim to reduce generation of the greenhouse gas by 20% by 2020, from a 2008 baseline.

It also provides support and allows postal members to share information and best practice in how to cut their emissions.

Started by 16 posts in 2008, the IPC Environmental Measurement and Monitoring System (EMMS) has helped its members collectively cut 926,000 tonnes of carbon emissions, taking them more than halfway to the 2020 goal.

Brazil Post

Brazil Post is one of the largest postal operators in the world and one of the largest state-owned companies in Latin America.

Handling 8.85bn mailpieces a year, the company has 114,600 employees and a network of 9,987 sites and 17,057 vehicles.

Brazil Post’s vehicles use about 8m litres of fuel each year, which could double as the company responds to economic growth in Brazil. This year alone the firm is buying 8,000 new vehicles in a BRL 265m ($129m USD) project.

The company is developing a Corporate Environmental Action Plan to set its priorities, and has already been engaged in carbon-reduction activities, from using renewable fuel and expanding use of bicycles, to recycling waste and planting trees.

Brazil Post is in the process of trying out eight electric vehicles, some of which it has been showing off at the Rio +20 summit this week.

The first operator in Latin America to join the IPC environmental programme, Brazil Post said it was “hugely important” to work to cut emissions as an operator in “a vast country such as ours”.

PInheiro said: “We have already made great strides to this end, and being part of IPC’s EMMS programme will help us strengthen those efforts.

“By sharing best practices with postal operators around the world we can both learn from our colleagues and share our own learnings with them, in our common objective to make a significant positive impact on the sector’s carbon footprint,” added the Brazil Post president.

Emerging economies

The IPC said Brazil Post was the second operator from the BRICS emerging economies to sign on to its EMMS initiative, after the South Africa Post Office last year.

The signing underscored that operators from developing and developed nations were working together to tackle a global problem, IPC said.

Zapf said: “Correios has already made considerable efforts in sustainability at home: it is now demonstrating its global leadership by helping lead in postal sector sustainability internationally.

“As the incumbent postal operator in Latin America’s largest economy, Correios’ participation is absolutely crucial in helping extend the global postal industry’s carbon reduction efforts into one of the world’s fastest-growing regions.”

– Brazil Post raised its postal rates by an average of 7.5% from Tuesday (19th June), as it carried out its annual price changes to respond to rising fuel prices, labour and other costs.