Climate & shipping - Meelunie
Positive impact / Climate & shipping

Reduce carbon footprint

Climate & shipping

Whether you believe that climate change is the result of carbon emissions, we can all agree that environmental pollution harms all of us. At Meelunie we are committed to transitioning to renewable energy and adopting low or zero-emission solutions and processes. Now that we realised our ambition to become carbon neutral which covers our own business operations, our next step is to take increasing responsibility in our value chain by partnering and participating with organizations that share the same ambition: a net zero world.

 

Meelunie’s Carbon Neutrality

As of 2021, the business operations of Meelunie are carbon neutral! A major milestone that we have been working towards with our international offices and Meelunie Positive Impact team. As Gandhi said, “If you want to change the world, start with yourself”. That’s exactly what we have done. To structure and measure our sustainability initiatives, we developed a continuous improvement cycle with five stages: measuring, developing, reducing, compensating and communicating. It is actively used for our journey to carbon neutrality, and we will continue to use it to ensure we remain carbon neutral.

FairClimateFund

FairClimateFund helps us in our mission to stay a carbon-neutral organisation and guides us in our journey to take more climate action. We partnered in 2019, to support underprivileged families with cleaner cookstoves in, for example, India and Cambodia. This leads to less smoke formation, protects biodiversity, supports local forests and reduce carbon emissions. These projects are Gold Standard and partly Fairtrade certified.

GoodShipping

GoodShipping helps us to decarbonise our value chains by replacing fossil fuels with sustainable alternatives. This is called insetting, reducing emissions inside the same industry. We do this to take climate action within our sea freight operations which is a substantial source of our supply chain emissions. Therefore, we joined forces in 2019 to reduce emissions on our Rotterdam to Hong Kong trade lane. Later, we focused on our Rotterdam to Shanghai trade lane as our China office is located there.

CarbonLeap

CarbonLeap helps us to eliminate our supply chain emissions by offering scalable carbon reductions across all modalities and geographies. We work together since 2022 to lower our footprint in our logistics operations and accelerate innovations in the voluntary carbon market. We do this by researching ways to increase the transparency of carbon emissions, insets and credits in our value chains. But also by researching other technologies of carbon reduction. When these alternatives are operational then we can act quickly as CarbonLeap operates independently.

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Our C02 calculator

The Meelunie CO2 Calculator is a software tool to calculate the greenhouse emissions (GHG) per traffic lane of our shipments worldwide. The calculations are based on data from the previous 12 months provided by the Clean Cargo Working Group (CCWG). Every year, we will upload their data into our system to update our CO2 Calculator.

  • WHY DID MEELUNIE DEVELOP THE CO2 CALCULATOR?
    We have developed this tool to track our progress towards zero emissions by the end of 2030. As there was no such tool available for a global supplier, we took responsibility and created one for ourselves. One of our aims is to raise awareness internally, and throughout the chain. But the most important reason is to gain insights into how to reduce our negative CO₂ footprint and see what we still need to compensate.
  • WHAT DOES THE CO2 CALCULATOR MEASURE?
    In the first phase, it will measure all CO₂ emissions – ‘tank-2-propeller’ – resulting from the ocean shipments Meelunie is handling for customers. In later phases, we will extend the scope by looking at the footprint we ourselves produce through Meelunie offices worldwide and our business trips.
  • WHY ARE YOU ONLY MEASURING ‘TANK-2-PROPELLER’?
    We feel we are responsible for our part of the shipment, and have therefore chosen to focus on reducing and compensating the ‘tank-2-propeller’ elements. In collaboration with the GoodShipping Program, we are making progress in reducing emissions from the use of the fuel itself.
  • HOW ARE EMISSIONS MEASURED?
    The formula we use is: Total emissions (Mt CO₂) = Distance (Km) x Emission factor (kg CO₂/Ton km) x #TEU Distance: known distances, including pre-haulage. Emission factor: based on data from Clean Cargo Working Group; TTW; and including detours and empty containers.
  • HAS THE CO2 CALCULATOR BEEN VALIDATED?
    No. However, our method of calculation is completely transparent, and can therefore be validated by any of our stakeholders.
  • WHO IS MEELUNIE'S PARTNER IN THIS PROCESS?
    For our CO2 Calculator, we are using data provided by the Clean Cargo Working Group (CCWG), a business-to-business initiative involving major brands, cargo carriers and freight forwarders. CCWG is dedicated to reducing the environmental impact of global goods transportation. Large multinationals like Amazon, Heineken and IKEA also trust the objectivity of the data provided by CCWG.
  • HOW CAN CUSTOMERS 'TRACK' MY OWN CO2 COMPENSATION?
    Following each shipment, our customers will receive a CO₂ document stating the emissions for their shipping. Those emissions are also communicated via their ‘customer portal’ online. Meelunie has already started by compensating for the routes Rotterdam – Hong Kong for Potato Starch Windmill and Thailand – USA for our Tapioca Starch. Our next step will be to allocate these compensations to our customers.
  • HOW IS MEELUNIE COMPENSATING THE CO2 EMISSIONS?
    We’ve chosen to work with two strong partners, both with a proven track record: Since September 2019, Meelunie and the GoodShipping Program have joined forces to decarbonize Meelunie’s Asian ocean freight. The GoodShipping Program works with second-generation sustainable biofuels that are completely derived from forest residues and waste cooking oil products. Using these biofuels achieves an 83% well-to-wake CO₂ reduction, while other toxic emissions, such as Sulphur Oxide (SO), are virtually eliminated. To also reduce the 17% CO₂ emissions from the production of the biofuel, we have purchased additional volume, thus compensating and/or eliminating our entire CO₂ emissions. The other partner is FairClimateFund (FCF). FCF ‘sells’ carbon credits (Fairtrade and Golden Standard), using the income to support poor families in developing countries. In 2019, Meelunie compensated 4444 tons of CO₂ emissions via FCF credits, thereby supporting 2210 households through a clean cooking project in India.
  • CO2 COMPENSATION : CURRENT STATUS & AMBITIONS.
    We have already made the first steps by actually reducing and compensating the CO₂ emissions of our shipments. - By 2025, we aim to have reduced and/or compensated all of our CO₂ emissions – tank-2-propeller – by 75%. - By 2030, we aim to be operating 100% CO2 neutral, along with our stakeholders.
  • HOW CAN CUSTOMERS AND SUPPLIERS PLAY THEIR PART?
    Through this initiative, we hope to inspire our customers and suppliers to start themselves compensating and reducing emissions for their part of the chain. Our goal is to engage all those various links in the chain. After summer 2020 (northern hemisphere), once our new CRM system has been implemented, customers and suppliers can choose to participate in our program and so claim the reductions themselves. Via our portal, customers and suppliers can select their contribution and receive a certificate after shipment. Meelunie will double the customer’s contribution.
  • CONTACT FOR MORE INFORMATION AND QUESTIONS
    For more information, remarks or suggestions, please ask your current contact person, who will help you further. We will also be delighted to reply to your emails sent to: positiveimpact@meelunie.com