The green agenda is clearly on the rising. More and more huge corporations are launching “green” initiatives within their organizations. One of these companies is Deutsche Post World Net (DPWN) – one of the largest companies in the world if you look on the number of employees.
DPWN has set-up an initiative called “GoGreen” to reduce the amount of carbon emmissions by 30% until 2020. That sounds like a long-term committment. But in a first step DPWN is starting with improving the carbon efficiency within their own organization by 10% until 2012. If you keep in mind that DPWN (including DHL and Postbank) employs nearly half a million people this will for sure have quite a significant impact on the environment.
But an impact is not only to be expected on the environment. The impact on purchasing will be quite dramatic too. To reach 30% by 2020 it will not be enough to look on the own operations. Basically DPWN will have to take a look on their suppliers and subcontractors also. If they want to achieve this goal they will have to reduce the carbon footprint of every letter or parcel they ship, and every square meter they use and everything they buy. So they will have to ask their suppliers to change and improve their carbon emmissions also. And this will definetely be a big task for the DPWN purchasing organization worldwide.
Lets hope in the names of our children and grandchildren that they will achieve this goal and that other corporations will follow them on this path.
August 26, 2008 at 10:06 am
This will most certainly have some sort of economic impact as well – initially it will of course drive extra cost but in the long run the improved strategic relationships with both suppliers and outside constituencies should provide a lot of benefits in all parts of the supply chain.
This reminds me of the slogan of a Swedish recycling company:
“No-one asked us to save the world – we’re in it for the money” (Hans Andersson Recycling).
This slogan does a good job of both promoting the company itself as well as inspiring debate on the usual notion that doing something to help the environment will only drive cost.
In any case – great to see such an initiative being launched!