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SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2021

Sustainability
strategy

Our sustainability strategy clusters around three strategic pillars: People, Planet and Partners. In this sustainability report, we share an update on the key activities and projects that we have been undertaking to reach our sustainability goals.

Accelerating our impact

The circular economy offers solutions to global challenges such as resource scarcity, the impact of waste and climate change. The products and services of Euro Pool Group, and its divisions EPS and LPR, provide an immediate solution to these challenges. The concept of circularity has been at the heart of our business model for nearly 30 years. Our reusable packaging and pallets significantly reduce CO2 emissions in the fresh food value chain, have a long lifetime and are 100% recyclable. At EPG, circularity lies at the core of our business model, and our reusable and recyclable carriers make it possible to close the loop. 

As part of our sustainability strategy, we have committed to reducing CO2 emissions by 20% by 2025 compared to 2017¹. Sustainability is more top of mind than ever, in legislation, in society and with our clients. We need to accelerate our sustainability efforts beyond our current commitments.

1 We calculate our carbon footprint in CO2 equivalent. This means that next to carbon dioxide (CO2), other greenhouse gases are also included. All emissions are expressed as CO2-equivalent emissions which include all major GHG-gases: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydro fluorocarbons (HFCs), per fluorocarbons (PFCs), sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) and nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) expressed as Global Warming Potential in carbon dioxide equivalents. However, for the readability of this report we refer to this simply as ‘CO2 emissions’. 

Consequently, in 2022 we will be working together with our leadership team, our employees and our partners to explore how can we accelerate in the field of sustainability, circularity and logistics optimisation. We want to boost our ambition and set clear and meaningful goals towards the future.

In 2021, the implementation of our sustainability strategy continued. We put a great deal of effort into further optimising our logistics network, using sustainable transport and increasing the rotation cycles of our assets. Another important focus area is energy use in our depots and service centres, and the efficiency of our equipment, for example the washing and drying process of our trays. At EPS, Project Cyan was implemented and transport by rail, including CoolRail, was extended. At LPR, we started developing country-specific action plans to further reduce our carbon footprint. We aim to finalise these plans and commit to undertaking concrete activities in the course of 2022. This will provide greater focus at the country level.

Sustainability awards

In 2021, LPR received the EcoVadis Platinum status. EcoVadis is a ratings platform to assess the corporate social responsibility and sustainable procurement of companies. This is great recognition for LPR’s environmental, social and responsible actions in the day-to-day performance of its activities.

EcoVadis is a ratings platform to assess the sustainability performance of companies. Over 90.000 companies in 175 countries across 200 industries are rated on how well they have integrated sustainability into their business and management systems. The Platinum award places LPR at the top of best performing companies that have been assessed by EcoVadis. LPR has been in the top 1% since 2018. 

In Italy, LPR and Simpool received a prize for their joint RED (Repair-E-Delivery) project that improves circularity in the supply chain. LPR works together with Simpool towards optimising the collection and delivery of pallets, by reducing travel distances and accelerating repair times. This makes the LPR's logistics distribution network much quicker and much more efficient. In 2021, the distance travelled was reduced by more than 150,000 kilometres, and consequently 121.34 tonnes of CO2 were saved.

This project was given the ‘Logistics of the Year 2021’ award by Assologistica, Assologistica Cultura e Formazione and the Euromerci magazine.

Read more of the sustainability report

Read more on the sustainability report and its most important pillars: People, Planet, Partners.

ICONE_Plan de travail 1
People

Our people are the key assets of our business. We are committed to providing training and development opportunities to strengthen our teams in all regions. We take measures across the organisation to contribute to the health and safety of our employees.


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Planet

We set the ambition to reduce the carbon footprint for each rotation of our trays and pallets by 20% by 2025, in comparison to the baseline in 2017. To achieve this goal, we are committed to strategic projects that focus on optimising logistics, green energy and our reusable carriers.


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Partners

Innovation and partnering with customers are key to driving circularity in the supply chain further. Together with our partners, we are constantly working on innovations and deploying new tools and technologies such as the Internet-of-Things (IoT) and other traceability tools.


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