Product transport

With more than a million products in transit on a typical day, shipments of HP products require large amounts of fossil fuels, causing greenhouse gas (GHG) and other emissions. Most of these emissions are from international airfreight, while roughly 25 percent are from road transport and parcel freight. Although we use ocean transport extensively, we estimate it produces less than 5 percent of our total GHG emissions from logistics.

We aim to reduce energy use and emissions by continuing to shift product transport to more efficient modes, optimizing our distribution network, influencing transport providers to improve their environmental performance, and improving the utilization of trucks, containers and pallets.

In 2008, HP added environmental performance as one of the seven core elements in our new logistics strategy, and we introduced environmental criteria in requirements for carriers. Requests for quotations (RFQs) to carriers for large regional and international programs now cover aspects such as environmental policies and programs, the ability to calculate GHG emissions specific to HP’s freight, and proposals to help HP reduce emissions.

Changing transport modes

Most of our computer and imaging products are assembled in Asia and then transported to Europe, the Americas and within Asia Pacific for sale. We typically ship these products by air and ocean to regional distribution centers, and then by truck or rail to their final destinations. We are converting some shipments from air to ocean, which reduces costs and also GHG emissions. GHG emissions are reduced because each tonne of freight transported by ocean produces only about 1/60th of the carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e) emissions that airfreight produces. The table below shows typical emissions per kilometer of transport by mode.¹

Transport mode	CO2e per km (kg)
Air	0.57
Road (truck)	0.072
Rail	0.02
Ocean	0.01

In 2009 we converted some shipments from air to ocean transport. These included some notebook shipments from Asia to Latin America and Europe as well as some inkjet products from Asia to Europe and the United States. We also converted some shipments from air to ocean for our Halo solutions video collaboration studios, which are produced in Puerto Rico and shipped to all destinations across the globe. Another mode conversion included changes from truck to rail within Europe and the United States.

Improving distribution

Optimizing our distribution network decreases the distance products travel and therefore reduces GHG emissions. For example:

• We introduced direct shipping in 2009 for notebooks from Asia to Latin America, instead of routing through Miami, and from Asia to Johannesburg, South Africa, bypassing Luxembourg. This saved 1,000 tonnes of CO₂e in 2009.
• We also began to ship inkjet products from Singapore to Sydney and Melbourne instead of to Freemantle on the west coast of Australia. This reduced the ocean journey length and avoids inland travel by truck and rail from Freemantle to Sydney and from Sydney to Melbourne. This saved 2,600 tonnes of CO₂e in 2009.

SmartWay

HP continues to participate in the SmartWay ^SM program, a voluntary partnership between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. surface freight industry that targets reductions in fuel consumption, GHG emissions and other air emissions.

In April 2008, HP became the first company out of almost 1,000 SmartWay partners to include the SmartWay logo on its product packaging. All HP products in the United States and Canada are shipped using a network composed entirely of exclusive SmartWay-certified surface transportation carriers. HP earned a SmartWay Excellence Award from the EPA for leadership in reducing fuel consumption and GHG emissions.

Improving the utilization of trucks, containers and pallets

We have expanded the use of plastic pallets, which are more than 70 percent lighter than wooden ones, saving fuel in transport. After use, our pallet vendor picks up the pallets from customers and reuses them if possible or sells the plastic to recyclers. The recapture rate is more than 90 percent for our Europe, Middle East and Africa region and more than 70 percent for the Americas. In some cases, customers in the Americas keep the pallets for internal use. (See more about pallets in Packaging.)

Now we have implemented the next generation of airfreight handling technology for notebook air shipments from Asia to Europe. Similar to slip sheets, which are often used to avoid pallets in ocean shipping, “clamp loading” uses special forklift devices to load notebooks on a lightweight, low-cost foam pallet that is recycled by our freight forwarders. This allows us to eliminate the use of plastic pallets which enables us to load 11 percent more cargo on an airplane. We are also able to build loads more efficiently to fit specific airline configurations. Overall, we estimate this saves more than $5 million and 20,000 metric tonnes CO₂e on an annualized basis.

Performance

In 2009, the emissions for the freight our global logistics providers transported on our behalf equaled an estimated 1.7 million tonnes CO₂e. This compares with 1,951,000 tonnes CO₂e from our own operations. Last year, we estimated GHG emissions in 2008 from product transport equaled 1.8 million tonnes CO₂e. The decrease is due in part to the global economic downturn as well as specific projects in 2009 (including those described above), which reduced GHG emissions by more than 52,000 tonnes CO₂e.

1. ¹ According to the World Resources Institute GHG Protocol.