USPS® Awarded As Supply Chain Leader By Climate Leadership Awards
As Chief Sustainability Officer of the United States Postal Service I am extremely proud to announce that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, and the Climate Registry have recognized the USPS with a 2017 Climate Leadership Award for Supply Chain Leadership. Supply Chain leadership — the USPS? Let me explain the basis for our award.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions
It begins with our commitment to track our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We do this by accounting for all the fuel and energy we use in our more than 200,000 vehicles and 30,000 buildings. This is important because we believe that in order to reduce our emissions we need to properly track them. We report these numbers to The Climate Registry, an organization that helps companies track and report their emissions numbers.
But we don’t stop at reporting, we also set goals to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. We plan to reduce our Scope 1 and 2 emissions from our buildings and vehicles by 25 percent by 2025 and our Scope 3 emissions from things like employee commutes and business travel by 30 percent. And right now we are well on our way to achieving our goals thanks to the good work by the USPS Supply Management Team.
Chief Sustainability Officer Tom Day and Surface Transportation CMD Manager, Bridget Rice
The USPS requires potential suppliers to include a detailed sustainability plan as a part of any business proposal, which outlines the supplier’s current sustainability initiatives and metrics as well as suggested initiatives on which the supplier is willing to work collaboratively with the Postal Service.
We have developed several initiatives to reduce supply chain emissions, including encouraging highway contract route suppliers to purchase lower greenhouse gas emitting vehicles. USPS conducts outreach to the transportation supplier community and encourages the use of alternative fuels by suppliers. By the end of Fiscal Year 2016 USPS had at least 178 tractors and trucks traveling more than 13.5 million miles annually using alternative fuel.
Sharing USPS sustainability tips
As a smart business practice the USPS seeks out suppliers who are EPA SmartWay members. If they are not we educate them on the benefits of EPA SmartWay membership, a program run by the EPA. For membership freight shippers, carriers, logistics companies and other stakeholder’s partner with EPA to measure, benchmark and improve logistics operations to reduce their carbon footprint.
We have also reduced overall transportation for backhauling, or transporting recyclables to processing centers in empty mail transport equipment for consolidation. Our efforts here have reduced the need for additional trips by supplier transportation to multiple smaller postal locations.
Through its organization-wide Green Purchasing Program, USPS holds the annual Supplier Sustainability Excellence Awards program which recognizes postal suppliers that have made significant achievements and contributions in green business practices.
I would like to take this opportunity to recognize the USPS Supply Management team that the Sustainability team shares this award.
If you would like to learn more about USPS Sustainability efforts please visit: USPS Greener-Than-You-Think.
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