Freight People will be carbon neutral by 2022.
This goal not only includes office and workforce emissions, but importantly removing the impact of the hundreds of thousands of freight movements Freight People facilitate every year.
The aim is to eradicate our own carbon footprint, and those of our customers.
Everything.
In the office environment, steps will include eliminating single-use plastics and ensuring everything not consumed is reused, recycled or composted.
Electricity (including cloud computing consumption) will either be sourced from verified non-emitting sources, or will be offset through officially recognised schemes.
Freight People will minimise long distance travel, and seek to use video conferencing for meetings and communication.
Our stage 1 goal is to have these, and other direct factors, completely neutral by Jan 1, 2021.
The freight industry is carbon intensive.
It is fairly obvious that our controlled emissions are the low hanging fruit. The big challenge will be calculating the emissions from all customer freight, and then reducing and offsetting those emissions.
With Australia's truck fleet one of the oldest in the developed world, and our industry's preference for Just In Time and desire to send everything by the fastest possible method, our work is cut out for us.
However, our initial planning work has already yielded some surprising results, and we are confident that by working closely with premium freight providers and with customers who share the same vision, we can do our bit to reduce, and then remove our impact on climate change.
All freight, completely carbon neutral, by Jan 1, 2022.
It's time to act.
"Far from being a luxury or a nice thing to do, we see the elimination of our impact on climate change as an absolute necessity," said Freight People Director Fiona Marshall, "We also know that our customers and suppliers are ready to share the data and make the required changes to achieve this goal.''
Freight People Director Matthew Marshall added, "The time frame is tight, but every day we delay simply exacerbates the problem. The best time to act was 20 years ago, the second best time is now".
It won't be easy, but we're committed.
Globally, transport is one of the top three contributors to climate change. It is no longer enough to just protest and complain, and it is certainly not enough to wait for the government to act.
If you want to stay in touch with our journey, you can sign up for regular updates here - http://eepurl.com/gQtH01
If you want to help us out, please email Marshall Hughes at m.hughes@freightpeople.com.au