Fuel for thought

You know the carbon footprint of a piece of print – from the paper used through to the energy consumed by the press that it was produced on – and you’re more than happy to share these details with your customers, but do you measure the number of ‘print miles’ that the job racks up en route to its destination? Surprisingly few printers do, despite the fact that transporting a piece of print is one of the biggest contributors to the carbon footprint of a job.

As John Haines, general manager of J&G Environmental, explains: "An individual print company objectively seeking to calculate its own footprint will need to examine if raw materials received at the factory gate, together with the finished product and waste leaving it, are being transported in the most efficient way with minimum contribution to pollution."

At the moment, few print businesses analyse this aspect of the supply chain and are either deliberately or unwittingly turning a blind eye to the impact of gas-guzzling fleets. However, with fuel prices prone to wild fluctuations, which in turn makes it difficult to forecast transport costs, more printers should be investigating greener delivery options.

Electric dreams
So how do you go about greening up your fleet? One sure-fire route to success is to follow the lead taken by suppliers to the printing industry and, in particular, the paper companies who have made major in-roads into establishing green supply chains. A number of paper suppliers have been taking advantage of greener transport options for some time now through the roll-out of fleets consisting of environmentally friendly trucks powered by biofuels or electric engines.

For instance, the James McNaughton Group, through delivery arm Gm2 Logistics, leases two Modec electric trucks – zero emission commercial vehicles that emit no noise and are exempt from congestion charges and road tax. The trucks, which have a 100 mile range and a two tonne payload, are admittedly more expensive to buy than a conventional diesel powered equivalent but Howard Browning, James McNaughton’s director for corporate responsibility, says leasing the trucks generates significant cost savings.

No emissions, no noise, plus it saves you money on tax and congestion fees – sounds too good to be true doesn’t it? Well like everything in life there are inevitably some downsides to going down the electric route, as Paddy Byrne, CSR manager at Premier Paper, points out: "Battery-powered vehicles have a limited range compared with equivalent diesel vehicles: recharging can take up to eight hours, speed is limited compared with an equivalent diesel vehicle and the price of the vehicle is higher than a diesel equivalent."

So while electric trucks may look attractive at first glance these factors could rule the option out for some operators – electric trucks clearly are not going to work for companies that do fast turnaround, high-volume jobs for customers based many miles away.

For businesses that handle such work, another option worth considering is biofuels. Legislation introduced in the government’s Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation sets the target of attaining more than 5% biofuel by volume in transport fuels from April 2010, so the incentive is there to make the switch. However, there are a number of significant obstacles constricting the uptake of biofuels.

Availability of refuelling stations is one major sticking point, as is the fact that some transport experts claim vehicles are experiencing problems when using fuel that contains a high percentage of biofuels. It tends to thicken up and block the van’s filters and, as a result, we have had vehicles break down, explains one logistics insider.

Potential drawbacks
These issues are one of the reasons why some vehicle manufacturers will only permit a maximum of 5% biofuel content – anything beyond this level could invalidate warranties, according to Browning.

In addition to this combination of factors, many people, like Premier Paper’s Byrne, are still not convinced by the biofuel argument. "If the product is produced in an area where a natural forest once stood, such as palm oil trees, then the negative environmental impact far outweighs any positive impact by using such biofuel," he explains. "However, if the fuel is produced from waste materials and/or such products as corn or rapeseed oil, the environmental impact is positive."

So while they deliver a number of different benefits, electric trucks and biofuels both have downsides. Another option is to invest in modern commercial vehicles. Ken Bailey, fleet director at Mini Clipper Logistics, Kodak’s preferred transport partner, says that the latest generation of vehicles have 'eco-friendly engines', which are much more fuel efficient than those installed in older vehicles.

McNaughton is taking a different tack using trailer and bogey combinations for some of its trunking routes, saving the need to run a separate but partly full HGV. The firm is also using fully automated route planning software, which creates the optimum delivery route for each vehicle, taking into account customer requirements and logical location routing.

Beyond investing in new vehicles or planning software, one of the cheapest and most important ways to minimise the impact of transporting goods is driver behaviour. Gm2 has started to tackle this problem by buying all new HGVs with automatic gearboxes, helping the driver deliver the power in a much smoother way.

Mini Clipper has gone one step further. According to Bailey, the company is currently in the midst of building up driver profiles. "We monitor fuel levels and check how many miles per gallon that they are doing and then benchmark this against manufacturer recommendations," he explains. Bailey adds that the company is planning to fit units to the vehicles in order to build up a carbon footprint for each driver, based on their driving behaviour patterns.

Another trend that you can expect to see more of is greater collaboration between suppliers, printers and customers to reduce the impact of shipping raw materials and completed print jobs around.

Antalis and Kodak have already set the bar through their tie-up in the north east of England and Scotland, with Antalis delivering Kodak plates and consumables alongside its own products. This reduces the chances of vehicles running half empty – a cardinal sin in green logistics terms.

If suppliers can do this why can’t printers think along similar lines? For instance, if customers place a handful of separate orders that are not time-sensitive then rolling them into one delivery makes financial and environmental sense (and no doubt many printers do this already). Why not take this a stage further? If one of your regular customers is located near a supplier’s regular customer, a collaborative approach that sees the supplier deliver the customer’s print job, could make sense for all parties. 

There are numerous ways that the printing industry can reduce the impact of ‘print miles’ without it costing any money – indeed it should help save companies money. What printers cannot afford to do is turn a blind eye to something that could easily be tackled and further enhance the sector’s growing green credentials.

CASE STUDY: IKON OFFICE SOLUTIONS

One print company with firsthand experience of operating a green vehicle is Ikon Office Solutions. The company set up an electric courier service last year for one of its major London-based clients that wanted to tick all of the sustainability boxes, according to Mark Smyth, head of outsourcing. Smyth says the customer has been delighted with the new service, although he concedes that there are both pros and cons associated with using this kind of vehicle.

"One of the biggest cons against it is the speed of the vehicle," explains Smyth. "It’s only really ideal for small towns and areas where you don’t get above certain speed limits because of the volume of traffic. It can also only carry a certain weight of load."

But Smyth believes that as demand for this type of vehicle grows, the technology will improve and the next generation models will be a major improvement. And even taking any current downsides into consideration, the upsides far outweigh the negatives. There is zero noise, there’s no CO2 emissions or pollution and no fuel consumption other than a small amount of electricity. You also get financial breaks when you use these types of vehicle. "There’s no fuel costs, no congestion charge to pay in London which might save you £300-£400 a month depending on how many times you go into the congestion zone, and there’s also free parking in a lot of areas as well."

So far only one customer is using the electric courier service but Smyth says that there has been strong interest from another customer and he thinks that when people do the maths, the sums will add up. It may cost you to go down this road but there are savings to be gained from it so there’s a balance to strike there. If the amount that you are paying runs out similar to a normal vehicle then you can sleep easily at night knowing that it’s not cost you any more and you are being a lot more environmentally friendly.