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 2017, 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.

BigMile

BigMile helps us calculate and analyse transport-related carbon emissions, for example, per shipment, trade lane, or customer. We had already calculated our emissions for sea freight. By partnering with BigMile in 2022, we were able to extend the calculations to cover all modalities, including pre- and on-carriage emissions. This partnership is a logical next step in giving our clients and other stakeholders even greater insight into the total carbon emissions of Meelunie products.

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Our CO2 calculator

Meelunie’s five-stage continuous improvement cycle — measuring, developing, reducing, compensating and communicating — is used to structure our Climate & shipping emissions.

  • WHY DID MEELUNIE DEVELOP THE CO2 CALCULATOR?

    To track our progress towards carbon-neutral transportation and supply chains. Previously there was no such tool available for a global supplier, so we took responsibility and created one for ourselves. We now have a strong partner in BigMile to calculate our emissions. One of our aims is to raise awareness, both internally and throughout our value chain. The key reasons for making these calculations are to gain insights into our shipping emissions and how to reduce our carbon footprint, and to see what we still need to compensate.

  • WHO IS MEELUNIE'S CO2 CALCULATOR PARTNER?

    BigMile, who set the standard in CO2e calculation, reporting, analysing and optimisation. They offer visualisation of our supply chain emissions performance, progress and potential improvements. Major organisations such as CEVA Logistics, DHL and Port of Rotterdam also work with BigMile.

  • WHAT DOES THE BIGMILE CO2 CALCULATOR MEASURE?

    All emissions (well-to-wheel) resulting from shipments that Meelunie handles for customers. This includes not only emissions from deep-sea shipping movements, but also our worldwide pre- and on-carriage by truck, train and barge.

    In addition, we have calculated and compensated our business operations, which include our offices, warehousing operations and employee mobility. So we know the business operations of Meelunie are carbon-neutral.

  • HOW ARE EMISSIONS MEASURED?

    In general, the following formula is used: Total emissions (in MT CO2e) = Activity (in tonne-km) x Emissions Intensity Factor (in kg CO2e per tonne-km). In this case, the activity being transportation. This follows the European Standard EN 16258, Global Logistics Emissions Council (GLEC) Framework, and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol: Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard.

  • HAS THE CO2 CALCULATOR BEEN ACCREDITED?

    Yes, by Smart Freight Centre.

  • WHAT TARGET HAS MEELUNIE SET IN TERMS OF CLIMATE & SHIPPING?

    We have already made the first steps in reducing and compensating for the CO2e emissions of our shipments. For example, we have fully reduced and compensated our Rotterdam to Shanghai trade lane. Additionally, we want to be transparent about our supply chain emissions by providing customers with information on where and how many CO2e emissions are emitted in our supply chain in 2022 and beyond. We want to raise awareness, which will hopefully be followed by steps by our supply chain partners to start reduction and compensation initiatives themselves. We will also facilitate such initiatives where necessary.