Brambles: Greener Supply Chains

Australian company Brambles, which operates in Mexico under the name CHEP, aims to become a pioneer in sustainable development. CHEP has approximately 330 million pallets, boxes and containers distributed in a global network of more than 750 service centers. The company operates in more than 60 countries (12 of them in Latin America) and in Mexico, it has around 18 million pallets, of 31 million in Latin America, reports T21. The Company is affiliated to UN’s Global Pact “Business Ambition for 1.5°”, where different enterprises set science-based targets toward limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, reports El Financiero.

Last year, CHEP announced its success with its Sustainability Review in its Five-Year Plan that took place from 2015 to 2020. The company successfully eliminated 10.3 million tons of CO2 – equivalent to the CO2 emitted by 1,950,560 homes in one year –, the use of 34.3GL of water – approximately 13,720 Olympic-sized pools – and 8 million m3 of wood, representing 5.8 million tons of solid waste and saving 8 million trees.

Recently, the company also released a Five-Year Plan that wants to transform how supply chains work, from 2020 to 2025. “Planet Positive, Business Positive, Community Positive” is the framework of the Australian company’s 2025 Sustainability Targets. The framework addresses three main objectives and finds efforts that go hand-in-hand with the UN’s SDGs:

First Brambles wants to be Planet Positive. To do that, the company focuses on the following three objectives:

• Forest Positive: 100 percent sustainable sourcing of timber.
• Climate Positive: 100 percent of operations will be renewable.
• Waste Positive: It aims to reclaim, recycle and replenish its water use.

Brambles aims to grow two trees for every tree it uses. It will commit to a 1.5° climate future, to zero product materials sent to landfills, to use 30 percent recycled or upcycled plastic waste and optimize all its water use.

To be Business Positive, the company will focus on the following three objectives:

• Supply Chains Positive: Guarantee share-and-reuse models and circular industries.
• Positive Collaboration: Increase customer collaboration projects to reduce costs and environmental impacts.
• Workplace Positive: More diversity and inclusion.

To improve business globally, the company will pioneer regenerative supply chains by improving its circular model every year.

Finally, to guarantee Positive Communities, the company will focus on three objectives:

• Food Positive: Improvement of food waste projects and collaboration with food banks to serve food.
• Circular Economy Transformation: Advocating, educating and impacting one million people to become circular economy change-makers (something Mexico’s automotive sector aims to do as well).
• Positive Impacts for People and the Planet: Developing social and natural capital.

CHEP aims to accomplish this through volunteering, in-kind donations, skills and expertise sharing and financial donations to fully accomplish this target.

Last year, CHEP, an affiliate of Brambles, made an agreement with Amazon to make more sustainable changes in e-commerce. The company has made many efforts to implement greener supply chains and has positive expectations for its next five years.