The Bel - visit site - Bel Group

33%
reduction in CO2 emissions
from plants in western France
to a warehouse in Lyon
Everybody’s business
Designed for adoption by all Group
employees, Bel’s approach to Corporate
Social Responsibility is particularly
relevant with respect to environmental
policy. Bel UK began encouraging
car-pooling some years ago, making it
a pioneering subsidiary in this area.
Along with the town of Lons-le-Saunier,
France, where a Bel plant employs more
than 500 persons, the Group has been
advocating sustainable travel by offering
environmentally friendly driving courses,
providing better information about
public transport options and facilitating
car-pooling. More generally, initiatives
are growing at Bel’s plants and offices
around the world to introduce
environmentally friendly practices that
save energy, water, paper, and other
resources in the workplace and even
at home. When extended to a Group
population of 11,400 families, such
initiatives can have a real impact.
Without my car!
Bel employees in Prague and Zeletava,
the Czech Republic, and Michalovce and
Bratislava, Slovakia were asked to leave
their cars in the garage for a day and use
more ecological means of transport to
get to work, including public transport,
car-pooling, bicycling, and even walking.
Everybody took part in the initiative,
which offered a good example of how
changing habits can help the
environment.
best
practice
Combined transport proves
to be both more ecological
and economical
Leerdammer ® is Bel’s most
popular cheese brand in
Italy. The production plant
that supplies the Italian
market, however, is located in
Schoonrewoerd, Netherlands, and
the road transport means from the
plant to the Italian warehouse was
lacking in effi ciency, prompting
to a review of the operation.
Combined transport (a/k/a
multimodal transport) proved to
be the most effective alternative
solution. Over a distance of more
than 1,000 kilometers, the cheese
is now trucked no more than a
total of 130 kilometers, including
the trip from the plant to the
Rotterdam train station and the
journey from a train station near
Milan to the Italian warehouse.
For the remaining 900 kilometers,
the cheese is shipped by rail.
In this case, rail transport offers
several advantages. It allows
8,500 metric tons of
Leerdammer ® to be shipped to
Italy each year, while saving
300,000 kilometers of road
transport.
It also lowers CO2 emissions
because rail transport does not
directly produce any such gases.
It is also signifi cantly cheaper and
poses no greater delay risks than
“all road” transport.
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To learn more about multimodal
transport challenges,
see our expert opinion at
www.smilesfortheplanet.com
Bel Group 2011 • 45