29 May 2020

Striving for sustainability

When we first started delivering our bouquets to East London in 2014, only in our wildest dreams did we think we’d be sending our flowers to people in cities and villages all over the country. (But we are dreamers, so we did think about it.) As business grew, requests for Petalon flowers further afield became more regular, so we excitedly made plans to make it possible.

When we launched our nationwide service in 2018, it was vital for us that we used a delivery company who were working hard to reduce their impact on the environment and made this a priority in what they do every day. They needed to be able to offer an efficient, next-day service nationwide, but they also needed to fit in with the environmental values at the centre of Petalon. And after some research, we found that in DPD.

DPD are committed to not only reducing their environmental impact, but making a positive impact on the environment too. This felt in-keeping with how we approach flower delivery – we want to reduce wastage in a typically very wasteful industry, by only offering two designs a week and using recyclable or biodegradable packaging, but we also want to give something back to the environment, which we do with donations to Bee Collective and planting trees in the UK.

DPD’s carbon-neutral commitment can be summarised in to two main goals; reducing their emissions across all aspects of the business where possible, and then offsetting any remaining emissions by supporting renewable and cleaner energy production:

• Reduction – optimising their delivery routes, adding alternative fuel vehicles to their fleet, introducing double-deck trucks to maximise loads in fewer vehicles, introducing the Pickup and Predict services, which increase first-time delivery success by offering local  pick up points or allowing customers to change their delivery date or advise a safe place to leave their parcel

• Offsetting – to offset their remaining emissions, they finance renewable and cleaner energy production projects together with EcoAct, the European leader in the Carbon Market. So far they have offset more than 800,000 tonnes of CO2e and their projects have produced the equivalent of 681,000 MWh of energy, which is the annual consumption of 410,000 houses.

The world is slowly becoming a more sustainable place. Over the years, we’ll undoubtedly see new, innovative ways for couriers to further reduce their environmental impact. When that happens, you can be sure we’ll be looking in to how to apply this to Petalon and what we do.

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