Delivering on sustainability

Logistics and transportation industry operator DHL Supply Chain understands the importance of sustainability in order to maintain efficiency and cut down on costs. A number of the company’s solutions have been implemented at its new $120 million Western Sydney campus, which was opened on 11 February by NSW Premier Mike Baird.

According to managing director Saul Resnick, DHL has “worked on everything” to increase the sustainability of its operations - “from how we light our buildings … to how we air condition our buildings … to the tyre pressure of our transport fleet, to reducing our packaging for our customers”. The company currently aims to reduce both its CO₂ emissions and waste to landfill by 30% by the year 2020.

Mark Hopes, vice president information technology, South Pacific, explained that DHL was “looking at well over $1 million in … waste disposal costs every year through the business, so we realised that this really wasn’t sustainable”. So the company launched an internal waste program, which focuses on education about the site’s waste management handling equipment, more environmentally friendly processing equipment and source separation.

The Western Sydney campus features some of DHL’s most sustainable solutions yet, including a polystyrene extruder which reduces packaging waste from one semitrailer to one pallet of resaleable building material. Some vendors choose to recycle this pallet as skids, said Hopes, while in other cases it is crunched up and used as filling in gardens. The company also has been lowering storage costs by drastically reducing whole cubic metres of Styrofoam, later reconstituting the material back into its original form if and when it is needed.

DHL has implemented a range of re-use programs in cooperation with its clients, which span the airline, automotive, consumer, electronics, energy, healthcare and retail industries. In many instances it’s simply a case of smart packaging - the company will send out the product in a cardboard box, which then gets returned for reprocessing. Some boxes will contain a biodegradable bag for the client to keep the product in - and in the case of temperature-sensitive products such as medicine, the company utilises the ‘esky-like’ DHL Cool Green Cell.

“You get a box which has got multiple labels on it, and you have to cut the old labels off so you’re sure it doesn’t go back to the old person,” said Peter Bruce, senior director - envirosolutions at DHL.

Some clients have a particular interest in sustainability. DHL recently signed a Lead Logistics Partnership with Fuji Xerox Australia (FXA) in order to reduce supply chain costs and management required to facilitate deliveries of FXA products to businesses across Australia. The company additionally has an arrangement with an unnamed retailer, said Hopes, which combines waste-to-energy with the removal of vehicles from the road.

“What we’ve designed is a solution which actually utilises the store delivery vehicles for the return of store waste back to a centralised recycling centre,” explained Hopes. “We separate all the waste by waste stream … or process it in the case of organic material, through an energy-from-waste system.

“We’re taking the organic waste, drying it and palletising it and then burning it in a biomass system. The heat energy that comes from the biomass system is then going to be used to heat the water within the facility, which will then be used to wash the crates that the retailer uses for delivering produce to the store.”

DHL’s services don’t stop at its clients or itself - the company is one of four co-regulatory providers of the National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme, and the only provider to meet all criteria of the scheme in 2014. Bruce explained that DHL has 140 collection points around Australia where consumers can drop off their old TVs and computers. The company’s recyclers break down the products into their core components and these are shredded down into their raw materials. This means they can go back into the manufacturing cycle and be re-used, Bruce added.

“So far we’ve recycled about 50,000 tonnes over the three years,” he noted. “In 2013-14, we recycled 14.8 million kg of product, which is equivalent to 5476 African elephants.”

So even with a brand new, 90,000 m² facility on its hands - or perhaps indeed because of it - DHL’s commitment to sustainability is as strong as ever. Resnick said the company faces the task of keeping costs down for its customers while also combating climate change and keeping up with global standards - and given the significant investment DHL has made in its new campus, the company is clearly feeling confident about its ability to deliver.