Dr Martin Blake, Head of Sustainability, Royal Mail Group.

With a background in sustainability and change management, Dr Martin Blake is well placed to oversee the carbon reduction initiatives of the mammoth Royal Mail Group. With 100% of sites running on green electricity and almost half of its delivery vehicle fleet running on biofuel, the organisation has made great strides. Blake spoke to Mel Poluck about how the organisation is further reducing its emissions and gave a glimpse into the Group's upcoming low carbon projects.

What is the scale of the Royal Mail carbon footprint?

"The total carbon emission is 880,000 tonnes - that's enough to fill Wembley Stadium 102 times! I'll give you some frightening statistics - we're the largest single employer in the UK. We employ 0.6% of the UK working population. We've got one of the largest fleets of trucks and vans - 35,000 - and we cover two million miles a night. In terms of logistics, we have 110,000 points of entry into the system, ie letterboxes, and we transport 85 million pieces of mail and deliver to 27 million addresses. So if you think about the randomness of that, from the Isles of Scilly to Benbecula in The Western Isles in Scotland, it's a huge logistical operation and the environmental footprint associated with that is huge. My job is to measure that in terms of carbon."

What is the key feature of your sustainability agenda?

"Over the last few years we've put together a holistic integrated programme comprised of nine separate projects, to become carbon neutral by 2015. Our basic strategy is to focus purely on reducing, recycling, eliminating and avoiding; and driving carbon out of the business. We'll start offsetting in about 2011."

What low carbon services do you offer your customers?

"We have the 'green parcel' service; when customers send a parcel, they can elect for it to be 'green' and we offset it. We subsidise that. There is also the 'Responsible mail programme' for door-to-door mail that's not addressed. We work with the producers of the mail and look at paper, inks, collation, packaging, the whole lifecycle and offset the carbon using the Sustainable Forestry Initiative who work with indigenous forests in the UK."

What are you doing about the carbon emissions produced by Royal mail's large fleet?

"Some 90% of our carbon footprint comes from the fleet. We're looking at [introducing] electric vehicles - up to 20,000 of our vehicles could be replaced with electric. We've got to look at the business case. We've already bought two and we're working with [French postal service] La Poste, who use a lot of electric vehicles.

"We are currently fitting telemetry in 6,000 to 8,000 of our vehicles, meaning vehicles are linked to a 'black box' to record acceleration, braking, speeds and miles per gallon (MPG) figures and will create 10% fuel savings from that. If a driver is not driving environmentally appropriately, it's flagged up. You can financially reward the drivers who are doing well."

Do you use biodiesel in your fleet vehicles?

"We're using biodiesel in 47% of the fleet. But we're uncomfortable with some of the provenance of biodiesel. For example, palm oil from Brazil means forests are cleared to grow the oil and this then travels across the Atlantic; it's not sustainable at all. From a carbon perspective, you're better off not doing it. We have research underway on biofuel and biodiesel, so we have a solid strategic stance on biodiesel. We want to do what's right and we're taking time to do that through research."

What are you doing about reducing the part of your footprint produced by air mail delivery?

"There is an additional use of aircraft because of a 56 mile per hour restriction applied to our lorries and trucks - irrespective of whether they are on biofuel or not. We couldn't get mail from London to Edinburgh for a next day delivery. So we're introducing double decker trailers to carry more [air]mail. This will also get in excess of 100 articulated lorries off the road."

Does Royal mail Group have plans to introduce its own renewable energy sources?

"As far as electric power is concerned, we're looking to go into a long term project to secure renewable energy in the future. We'll work with a financier and put together a wind farm to produce energy for us then claim the additionality. We have just commissioned a wind turbine at a delivery office in Bootle."

What is the most challenging aspect of your work?

"The size and scale and amount of stakeholders. To get deployment in an organisation of this size and scale, we're dealing with change management and indeed risk management and performance management."

What is the key to a successful low carbon programme?

"At times it's a rollercoaster: you win some, you lose some. You can never be too wedded to [an idea]. The secret is engagement, engaging stakeholders so they own it. It's all led by people who are the main stakeholder in each area. This is absolutely not a prescriptive programme."

Best Practice Tips

Please visit the Forum here and share a tip that you have for organisations to reduce their carbon emissions. Often the very simplest ideas can have the greatest effect:

• "Drink tap water. The bottled water industry uses around 2.7 million tonnes of plastic in packaging not to mention the transport cost in fossil fuel."
  (from: http://www.green-england.co.uk/)
  

• "If enough of us start to make the small changes to our daily behaviours, we will make a significant contribution to the environment"
  (Andy Laughlan, Co-Founder, GOGREENCAR.)