A dynamic, modern and up-to-date company: Poste Italiane is becoming increasingly green from an environmental point of view, for both its traditional services and its more modern and digital ones. Along with many significant targets to be achieved, considering that the group led by CEO Matteo Del Fante has pledged to reduce its emissions by 30% by 2025 and to reduce them to zero in net terms, achieving so-called carbon neutrality, by 2030.
The Smart Building project
Poste’s strategy was summarised by Co-General Manager Giuseppe Lasco in the columns of Repubblica’s Green&Blue, a monthly magazine of news, analyses, studies, insights and interviews on the universe of the environment and sustainability. Lasco explains that ‘the company is acting mainly on the energy efficiency of buildings and logistics, our own and those of our partners. We have chosen to make the buildings more efficient,’ he clarified, ‘through the Smart Building project, which aims to monitor consumption, the climatic conditions inside and outside the buildings, and the automatic implementation of adjustment and management systems for air conditioning, heating and lighting systems. It is no coincidence that Poste is the one of the largest real estate owners in Italy, therefore starting to combat emissions from offices and buildings is a clear, precise and far-sighted strategy.
Combating emissions and energy optimisation
Poste’s project is really articulated and is also based on a massive installation of photovoltaic panels, precisely to ensure the energy optimisation project mentioned above. According to Giuseppe Lasco, ‘more than 650 locations have already been made more efficient to date’. The idea of a gradual switch to renewable sources, therefore, represents a project for Poste that continues apace. And the figures already look comforting: last year, Poste consumed a total of 4,157,939 Giga Joules (GJ), 1,588,317 of which came from renewable sources.
The example of Landriano
An emblem of the company’s decisive green turn is undoubtedly the roof of the logistics centre in Landriano (Pavia), for which the company has invested EUR 60 million and on which 2,500 latest-generation photovoltaic panels have been installed, producing electricity that covers 80% of the plant’s consumption and reducing annual carbon dioxide emissions by 210 tonnes. Built on a huge area, Landriano is Italy’s largest hub for e-commerce and express courier services. In this case too, the figures achieved by Poste and reported by Repubblica are impressive: the 600 employees of the logistics centre process 300,000 parcels per day. Organisation and sorting is made easier thanks to a modern system based on a special technology that uses no fewer than 17 robots to simplify all tasks. As recently stated by CEO Del Fante – “this a further step in the process of transforming Poste Italiane’s logistics infrastructure, which focuses on innovation and sustainability to better respond to the new online shopping habits of Italians. It is a strategic infrastructure that enables us to develop the logistics network along the entire value chain and allows us to exploit the full growth potential of e-commerce’.
Green parcels, letters and fleet
The delivery of parcels and letters is also increasingly moving towards sustainability, so much so that the company’s goal is to reduce emissions by 40% by 2025. Here too, the numbers already mark an important turnaround: 15.4% of the Poste Italiane fleet already boasts a reduced environmental impact. And Poste’s bar is set to reach 27,800 green vehicles by 2025. In addition, Poste’s policy is increasingly geared towards single-point delivery, places where customers can conveniently go to collect what they have ordered.
Products, a sustainable turnaround
When it comes to products, the company’s focus on sustainability is high: Poste’s new financial offer is introducing certified green funds that apply the European taxonomy, while the new PostePay cards use plastic recycled from the oceans, and the phone Sim cards are environmentally friendly as well, with the not too distant prospect of soon making them fully electronic.
An ethical company
Poste is also the Italian company that cares most about the well-being and satisfaction of its employees: ‘We always put our employees at the centre of our project with a series of measures dedicated to welfare or wage equality,’ emphasised Co-General Manager Giuseppe Lasco, in the pages of Green&Blue. It is also for this reason that we have strengthened our governance with processes and guidelines to maximise ethics. We believe, in fact, that in order to build a truly sustainable strategy, it is essential to focus on the ethics of the company’. These words were immediately followed by projects oriented decisively in this direction: in fact, since mid-June, an electricity offer has started that is characterised by being 100% green for the over 120,000 employees and pensioners of the Poste Group. The energy is produced by plants fully powered renewable sources, also with the aim of eliminating or reducing greenhouse gases. Poste’s plans also include becoming one of the largest suppliers in Italy in the retail market for electricity and natural gas within the next three years, with the prospect of reaching 600,000 customers in 2023, rising to one million the following year and one and a half million in 2025.
