Sustainability

Saving loads of carbon

By Knauf Insulation
March 09, 2022

Transportation at Knauf Insulation is responsible for generating around 10% of the CO2 embodied in our products — that is why we are taking action to shrink the carbon footprint of our haulage.

Knauf Insulation is assessing the environmental impact of its transportation and logistics with the aim of dramatically reducing the carbon footprint of customer truck deliveries.

Julian Fassin, OtC Business Process Officer – Order Fulfilment

Julian Fassin, Business Process Officer, is using what is known as the Global Logistics Emission Council (GLEC) framework, an internationally recognised standard to calculate transportation emissions.

“We are in the initial stages of CO2 transport assessment as the methodology is complex factoring into algorithms, for example, truck routes, engine types, load weights, load origins and destinations,” he says.

“Once we have baseline assumptions to work with, we can refine this data with precise real time data such as actual distances travelled by trucks or specific engine types used. This is significant as more than 90% of our loads are transported by truck.

Ambitious transport CO2 reduction

“The aim is to use this data to work on reducing our transportation carbon footprint. Not only is this important to our customers it is an important contribution to Knauf Insulation’s sustainability strategy For A Better World.”

The company has committed to achieve zero carbon and minimise the impact of its products and manufacturing plants. To ensure this aim is kept on track, the company has set a 2025 target to reduce the embodied carbon of its solutions by 15% — that is the carbon generated at every stage of a product’s lifecycle from the sourcing of materials to their ultimate disposal.

After raw material sourcing and manufacturing, customer deliveries account for around 10% of the embodied CO2 in Knauf Insulation products.

On a global level, road travel accounts for 20% of global CO2 emissions with 30% of this total generated from transportation trucks. In the United States, the transportation website FreightWaves and UK calculator found that the average truck carbon footprint was 223 tonnes of CO2 (the average carbon footprint of an American is 16 tonnes).

Bigger loads, shorter distances

Green logistics, truck allocation, lower transporation footprint

In addition to Julian’s project to measure and optimise transportation and reduce CO2, the company has introduced new ways to improve plant allocation and distribution.

This is important because, for example, just cutting a distance from 1,000km to 500km can cut total embodied carbon of a product by up to 3%.

Knauf Insulation also compresses products to ensure fewer distribution trucks are needed — for example, 5,800m2 of 50mm Mineral Plus can be delivered in one 80m² truck rather than 3.6 trucks required for traditional Rock Mineral Wool — and in many locations uses trucks with low emission EUR5 or EUR6 engines.

In Belgium, Knauf Insulation is using 25.5m ECO-COMBI trucks for transportation to the Netherlands.

A single ECO-COMBI can deliver up to 30 pallets of our Glass Mineral Wool which enables Knauf Insulation to transport the same volume of product but using 30% fewer standard trailers which cuts CO2 emissions by around 20%.