Dr Pepper Snapple Group (DPS) joined the SmartWay Transport Partnership, which is a collaboration between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and industry partners. The partnership aims to significantly reduce greenhouse gases and air pollution through improvements to the environmental performance of transportation operations.
By signing on with SmartWay, DPS will contribute to the partnership’s goal to reduce 33 to 66 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and up to 200,000 tons of nitrogen oxide a year by 2012. The soft drink company’s involvement with SmartWay will include the transportation of the raw materials, concentrates and finished beverages to bottling plants, warehouse facilities and distribution centers across the country by third-party carriers, it said.
In a statement, Tim Gratto, vice president of sustainability for DPS, said joining SmartWay complements the five-year environmental sustainability goals the company announced earlier this year with the release of its first corporate social responsibility report “Sustainability in Action.”
“We are very proud to join the SmartWay Transport Partnership,” Gratto said. “It’s a milestone in our ongoing efforts to reduce the environmental impact of manufacturing and delivering our products to our valued customers and consumers. Earlier this year, we announced a goal to ship 20 percent more product for every gallon of fuel used in our company-owned DSD operations by 2015. Now, as part of SmartWay, we’re taking meaningful steps to address the impacts of our third-party shipping as well.”
Since 2008, DPS has launched initiatives to improve efficiency on its more than 5,000 DSD routes and replaced more than 800 commercial vehicles with more fuel efficient models. Its new commercial motor vehicles have systems to electronically control speed as well as five-minute idle shut-down technology, the company said. DPS also is considering ways to integrate alternative energy vehicles into its fleet, it said.
