This Earth Day we are rallying behind the theme “Invest in Our Planet” by highlighting how investing time, money, and resources into developing new business practices has lowered our environmental impact.

The transport and logistics sector is one of the top polluting industries, and as Russell Group plays a key role in the supply chain management of our customers, our environmental performance affects not only our own environmental goals and commitments but also the goals and commitments of our customers. We therefore take our environmental responsibilities and performance very seriously.

Over the past 10 years we have invested £1 million into our sustainability efforts with the aim of lowering our environmental impact and reaching our goal of being NET Zero by 2040.

Alongside £1 million, we have invested our time and resources to implement several changes to our business practices. These included but were not limited to; improving recycling facilities across our sites, reviewing and replacing our lighting, an ICT Plan to virtualise our server infrastructure and increase existing use or thin client technology, and the installation of Vehicle Telematics in Russell Delivery Vehicles. Investments like these resulted in an annual saving of 1,729.22 t CO2 and £500,000 – proving that investing time, money, and resources into developing new business practices can benefit both our business and our planet.

Over the past 5 years, a modal shift from road to rail has saved us 7.5 million gallons of diesel and reduced our carbon emissions by 43,500 tonnes. As such, we are currently collaborating with one of our key customers to construct an interchange terminal to aid the migration from road to rail.

In addition to moving more journeys to rail, we have recently invested in zero emission electric forklift trucks to use across our warehouses and rubber tyre gantry cranes at our Daventry and Blackford sites. The switch to electric also extends to our rail services with electric locomotives being used for 24 rail services per week between Coatbridge and Daventry.

Investing in our planet by spending time, money, and resources has significantly lowered our CO2 emissions. As a result, we are continuously reviewing our environmental initiatives and investing in new sustainability projects to drive us closer to NET Zero by 2040.

More information about our Environmental Policy and Sustainability Strategy can be found in our Sustainability Statement.