Performance

In 2006, we reduced the environmental impacts of transporting our products by continued modal shift from air transport to sea transport and by improving transport planning and pallet use.

	Modal shift

• Switched more products from air to ship. Although in 2005 we chartered 19 aircraft specifically to transport printer products from Asia to the United States, in 2006 we used none.

	Transport loading

• Improved loading to use full truck loads rather than partial loads, increasing capacity utilization from 75% to more than 80%. This reduced the number of trips per product sold by 10% for the Imaging and Printing Group in the United States, avoiding more than 100,000 transport miles, saving 18,000 gallons of diesel fuel and so avoiding 182 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions¹.
• Used special pallets in air transport containers, which created space for one additional pallet and improved capacity utilization by approximately 9%.

	Pallet programs

• Introduced plastic pallets for notebook computer shipments by air from China to Europe. Plastic pallets weigh less than a quarter of wooden ones and require less energy to transport.
• Used taller pallets in trucks, eliminating one pallet layer. This saved approximately 100,000 pallets and $800,000 in 2006, as well as 21,000 board feet of wood.

¹ Assuming a conversion rate of 10.1 kg (22.3 pounds) of CO₂ vehicle emissions per gallon of fuel consumed (http://www.epa.gov/otaq/climate/420f05001.pdf).