Poste Italiane plays a leading role in the European Green New Deal with zero-emission postal workers. Increasingly green deliveries and carbon neutrality by 2030 are among the company’s goals, which in its 2024 Sustain & Innovate Plus Plan calls for allocating a third of its investments to sustainability. Il Messaggero devotes ample space to the project.
Poste’s Green New Deal
The Roman newspaper begins by describing the current situation on the green front at Poste Italiane. “Green vehicles for delivering the post and goods. But also smart buildings and new photovoltaic systems distributed among its properties. This is how Poste Italiane aims to achieve zero emissions by 2030. The renovation of the company’s fleet, which will have 5,800 operational electric vehicles by the end of 2022, continues as planned. Objective: to reach 28,000 eco-friendly vehicles by 2024. The electric and hybrid ones will be able to rely on a network of almost 6,000 charging stations”.
Constant growth for sustainability
Il Messaggero runs down the numbers of a successful strategy: “Today, 98% of the Post Italiane Group’s electricity supply comes from 100% renewable sources. In line with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement and the European Green New Deal, the company has committed to a 30% reduction in total emissions by 2025 and to achieving carbon neutrality in 2030, well ahead of the deadline set by the European Union. To this end, investments to make the fleet more sustainable are proving decisive, considering that Poste Italiane reaches cities, towns, and villages every day to deliver the post through more than 30,000 postal workers. Not just green vans and motorbikes. Nowadays, postal workers also move around on pedal-assisted cargo bikes, special bicycles equipped with mini containers for carrying letters and parcels.
The new green fleet
More specifically, Poste Italiane went from 11% green vehicles in 2016 to 15% in 2021 and plans to reach 20% by December, with the aim of replacing the entire company fleet with low-emission vehicles before 2025. The new green fleet will lead to a reduction in CO2 equal to around 80,000 trees. Poste Italiane letter carriers and drivers also conducted a series of test drives on the Vallelunga racetrack to evaluate the performance of three- and four-wheel thermal, hybrid, and electric vehicles”.
Collaboration with ACI and beyond
The Roman newspaper also explains how Poste Italiane has started “a close collaboration with ACI to train employees on road safety and safe driving”. Not only that, the company has also scheduled all vehicles to be washed every two months and sanitised every six months. Furthermore, the newspaper states that, “Poste Italiane is also introducing smart building solutions at its properties (we’re talking around 2,000 buildings), with the aim of reducing the energy consumed by around 8 GWh by 2025. In 2021, 91,000 new LED lights will be installed in 400 buildings. The project to enhance renewable sources also calls for developing around 400 photovoltaic systems on its buildings with flat roofs, for a total of 18 MWp and around 25 GW of expected production per year when fully operational, with an investment of €31 million”.
Poste Italiane’s economic value
The report concludes by discussing Poste Italiane’s economic value, which generated direct and indirect impacts on the Italian economy in 2021. It states that, “It has contributed €12.5 billion to GDP and about €2 billion in tax revenue. There are 183,000 workers in the production chain, for a total of €7.3 billion in labour income. Small and medium-sized enterprises working with Poste Italiane have generated GDP impacts of €1.4 billion and €388 million in tax revenue”.
