Nestlé in society Creating Shared Value and meeting our commitments 2015

Nestlé in society:
Creating Shared Value
Nutrition, health
and wellness Rural development Water
Environmental
sustainability
Human rights
and compliance
Our
people
G4-EN19, Transport G4-DMA, G4-EN30
Transport and distribution
Every day, we transport more than 140 000 tonnes of products from 1600 warehouses to our customers. Travelling
the equivalent of 269 times around the world every day, much of this distribution relies on partnerships with
third-party logistics providers. They help us monitor our environmental performance and improve the efficiency of
our network by reducing mileage, fuel consumption, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, noise and congestion. Our
reporting spans the transportation of goods from factory to distribution centre to customer, covering 63% of the
total product volume we distribute. All figures in this section are for 2014 – the latest data available – with the
exception of the ISO certified data on page 196.
Reducing emissions from transport
and distribution
Our commitment
Provide climate change leadership
Our objective
By 2020 – Reduce GHG emissions per tonne of product
by 10% in our distribution operations versus 2014.
Our approach
As outlined in The Nestlé Policy on Environmental
Sustainability, our approach is to:
• Optimise distribution networks and route planning across
our operations;
• Explore opportunities to improve transportation by switching
modes of transport and trialling alternative fuels; and
• Expand driver training to address both safety and
environmental efficiency (see Our people for information on
road safety).
To further optimise our performance, we are focusing on
increasing vehicle utilisation, reducing empty transport
journeys and constantly reviewing our strategic distribution
networks. For our own fleet operations, we are working to
optimise route planning on an ongoing basis. Moving from
traditional road transport to rail or short-sea freight, as well as
switching to natural gas trucks, has the potential to further
reduce our environmental impact in transportation. And in our
warehouses, we are concentrating on reducing energy
consumption and switching to renewable energy.
New technologies are crucial in every case, so we invest in
innovations that will provide environmental and efficiency
improvements.
We have set ourselves three new objectives to reinforce our
efforts in reducing GHG emissions in our distribution operations
and in our major warehouses, and using natural refrigerants in
our new refrigerated trucks.
GHG emissions from our transport and distribution operations
– specifically carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), methane (CH4) and nitrous
oxide (N2O) – exceeded 3.1 million tonnes in 2014. We work to
continuously improve our general environmental performance
and, in particular, our GHG emissions.
We are working to cut fuel consumption and GHG
emissions by improving the efficiency of our distribution
networks – making better use of space in our vehicles,
avoiding unnecessary miles and using more efficient modes of
transport. Our new objective is to cut GHG emissions per
tonne of product by 10% by 2020, using 2014 data as our
baseline, and will report on initial progress in our next report.
Emissions from transport (estimated million tonnes
of CO 2 eq)
2014 3.1
2013 3.1 *
2012 3.2
*
The 2013 figures have been restated due to a refined reporting approach. The 2014
figures are the latest available at the time of publication.
Optimising vehicle capacity utilisation
Delivery vehicles that travel empty or with limited loads are
inefficient and costly, so we are making a considerable effort
to optimise vehicle capacity utilisation. Although the maximum
load of a truck or container can be limited by the maximum
weight or the maximum available volume, even a 1%
improvement in load utilisation would reduce distribution
costs by around CHF 50 million and reduce CO 2 emissions by
29 000 tonnes.
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