Simple measures reduce carbon footprint – and costs

Companies should be decreasing their carbon footprint by addressing both internal and external operations, says Pieter Greeff, managing director of Manica Group Namibia. “Our approach is threetiered, including our internal business operations, the external operations and the logistical industry.” In the process of developing a definitive plan of action to address carbon footprint in its external business and the logistical industry, much has already been done on the internal front. “We consolidated our warehousing facilities, introduced an aggressive paperless environment with active recycling, cut down and improved coordination of business travel for both air and road, and decreased electricity usage to an onlyif- really-necessary state,” he says. “In some areas expenditure was required to introduce new systems. However, these systems have already proved to be costeffective, often reducing costs considerably from day one.” According to Metro Minds managing director, Juliette Fourie, training is a huge paper-based business. “Recycling is therefore a key element for us as we can re-use all our scrap paper. We are supporting a recycling concept called Eco-Monkey recycling to help us in this project.” Doug Duffy, divisional director freight forwarding for the ICM group, says he believes much has already been done in a short space of time. “Especially if one takes into consideration that this is an industry notorious for major volumes of paperwork.” He says ICM is running some initiatives with service providers and customers to reduce the amount of paperwork required to do business. “We are also working with our transport providers on programmes to reduce carbon footprint. As a business we also favour a move to rail transport.” Pieter Fourie of the University of Stellenbosch agrees that there is no denying that rail is the “greener” option as it is more environmentally friendly.