Blue and Brown Make Green
WASHINGTON – In a video address to a global audience, U.S. Postal Service Postmaster General and Chief Executive Officer Patrick Donahoe, and UPS Chairman and CEO Scott Davis announced a unique partnership designed to offer better service to customers, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and optimize operational efficiencies.
“We’ve named our partnership ‘Blue and Brown Make Green,’” said Donahoe. “By working together, the Postal Service and UPS are able to reduce costs, serve our customers better and achieve sustainability goals, such as reducing our carbon footprints.”
“It certainly describes what the Postal Service and UPS have been working on together,” said Davis. “The world is changing dramatically as we become a more global economy. And, it takes big ideas and bold moves to keep up. This collaboration to reduce the carbon footprint of our respective supply chains is the sustainability wave of the future,” Davis added.
The Postal Service is the world’s largest mail service, delivering nearly 40 percent of the world’s mail to more than 151 million addresses in America. UPS is the world’s largest package delivery company, and is one of the leading global providers of specialized transportation and logistics services. In 2011, UPS delivered more than four billion packages and documents to more than 220 countries and territories.
In the USPS/UPS partnership video Donahoe and Davis discuss their efforts to improve service to their customers, reduce costs and improve the environment. While USPS and UPS are keen competitors, they also are each other’s customers.
USPS delivers many of UPS’s packages through its “last mile” network which is leveraged to provide services including Parcel Select* and Parcel Return, the latter, a convenient service for UPS customers to drop returnable merchandise at Post Offices for UPS retrieval and return to retailers. Last year, UPS carried millions of pounds of USPS letter and package mail across the country and around the world on its extensive air and ground transportation networks.
“Our working relationship with UPS supports the Postal Service’s goal to deliver mail at the lowest cost with minimal impact on the environment,” added Donahoe. “It’s a great template for how posts and private enterprises can work together to better serve customers, the planet and the bottom line. We hope our partnership can serve as a model for others to work together in new ways, whether they are competitors, collaborators, customers or all the above.”
Donahoe and Davis concurred that by seeking opportunities to be cost effective and create a cleaner, more sustainable environment together, USPS and UPS can deliver a better and greener future for generations to come.
The Postal Service participates in the International Post Corporation’s Environmental Measurement and Monitoring System (EMMS), the global postal industry’s program to reduce its carbon footprint 20 percent by 2020 compared to 2008. UPS is providing sustainability data to USPS for that program. The USPS/UPS partnership video and EMMS report also can be found at http://sustainability.ipc.be/en/best-practice-cases/USPS.aspx.