Delivery trucks supplying supermarkets, grocery stores and the public during lockdown have been providing a vital lifeline. The dramatic shift to online shopping prompted by COVID-19 is likely to precipitate a new era of shopping habits and transport logistics.
Meeting demand for deliveries will mean more trucks on the road, which has huge environmental implications. In the UK, the John Lewis Partnership, which owns the John Lewis & Partners and Waitrose & Partners brands, is taking its responsibilities seriously by accelerating its net zero carbon plans across its transport fleet, with a commitment to end the use of fossil fuels by 2030. To fill its Waitrose heavy trucks, the John Lewis Partnership is building a new biomethane gas filling station at its Bracknell site in partnership with Air Liquide. Food waste and water materials will be used to make the biomethane, slashing CO2 emissions by 80%. The big brand owners say the site will ‘save over 70,000 tonnes of CO2, equivalent to the carbon footprint produced by over 13,000 UK households’.
“The evidence of climate change is all around us, so it’s important we act now using available technology rather than wait for unproven solutions to appear. We are working hard towards our new aim of removing all fossil fuel from our transport fleet by 2030, which will reduce our carbon emissions by over half a million tonnes and gets us well on the way to our ultimate target of operating a net zero carbon emission fleet,” said Justin Laney, Partner & General Manager of Central Transport at the John Lewis Partnership.
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