Knauf Insulation is assessing the environmental impact of its transportation and logistics with the aim of dramatically reducing the carbon footprint of customer truck deliveries.
Julian Fassin, Knauf Insulation’s Business Process Officer – Order Fulfilment, is using what is known as the Global Logistics Emission Council (GLEC) framework, an internationally recognised standard, to calculate the company’s transportation emissions.
“We are in the initial stages of assessment as the methodology is complex factoring into algorithms, for example, truck routes, engine types, load weights, load origins and destinations,” he says.
“Once we have baseline assumptions to work with, we can refine this data with precise real time data such as actual distances travelled by trucks or specific engine types used. This is significant as more than 90% of our loads are transported by truck.
Header image: Huge 25.5 m ECO-COMBI trucks can deliver up to 30 pallets of Knauf Insulation Glass Mineral Wool enabling the transportation of the same volume of product but using 30% fewer standard trailers, which cuts CO2 emissions by around 20%
Ambitious carbon reduction
“The aim is to use this data to work on reducing our transportation carbon footprint. Not only is this important to our customers it is an important contribution to Knauf Insulation’s sustainability strategy For A Better World.”
The company has committed to achieve zero carbon and minimise the impact of its products and manufacturing plants. To ensure this aim is kept on track, the company has set a 2025 target to reduce the embodied carbon of its solutions by 15% — that is the carbon generated at every stage of a product’s life cycle from the sourcing of materials to their ultimate disposal.
After raw material sourcing and manufacturing, customer deliveries account for around 10% of the embodied carbon of Knauf Insulation products.
Bigger loads, shorter distances
In addition to Julian’s project to measure and optimise transportation, the company has introduced new ways to improve plant allocation and distribution. This is important because, for example, just reducing a distance from 1,000 km to 500 km can cut total embodied carbon of a product by up to 3 %.
Knauf Insulation also compresses products to ensure fewer distribution trucks are needed — for example, 5,800 m² of 50mm Mineral Plus can be delivered in one 80 m² truck rather than 3.6 trucks required for traditional Rock Mineral Wool — and in many locations uses trucks with low emission EUR5 or EUR6 engines.
In Belgium, Knauf Insulation is using 25.5 m ECO-COMBI trucks for haulage to the Netherlands. A single ECOCOMBI can deliver up to 30 pallets of our Glass Mineral Wool which enables Knauf Insulation to transport the same volume of product but using 30% fewer standard trailers which cuts CO2 emissions by around 20%.
Driving ambition
Knauf Insulation sites in the Netherlands and in the UK are reducing the carbon footprint of their lease vehicles by switching from diesel cars to electric and hybrid vehicles.
At our Dutch site in Gilze, the aim is to reduce average vehicle CO2 emissions from 110 g/km to 50 g/km after 2025.
In 2019, average CO2 emissions were 110g/km, with zero hybrid or electric cars. By 2021, the CO2 average was set to fall by 14% after replacing these cars with combination of full electric, hybrid and mild hybrid cars.
The target is now to develop the low carbon fleet further to reduce average CO2 to 81 g/km by 2023 by introducing more electric cars, followed by a revamp of the fleet that will then take the average to 50 g/km after 2025.
In the UK, Knauf Insulation non-commercial drivers with annual mileages of less than 10,000 km can order full electric vehicles, while commercial high mileage drivers can order hybrid vehicles.
Since the policy was introduced in October 2020, 66% of vehicles delivered to the company are hybrid cars (1-60 g/km) or full electric (0 g/km).
Employees that choose an electric or hybrid vehicle need to have a charging point installed at home. A grant scheme covers up to 75% of this installation and 50% of the remaining costs is paid by Knauf Insulation.
Picture in the header:
Huge 25.5 m ECO-COMBI trucks can deliver up to 30 pallets of Knauf Insulation Glass Mineral Wool enabling the transportation of the same volume of product but using 30% fewer standard trailers, which cuts CO2 emissions by around 20%
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