Five ways to go green and push up your profits

By Steve Bridge, managing director, eStar Truck & Van

We live in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world – and it can feel like the goalposts move more often than anyone can feel comfortable with. But, and it’s a big but, does that mean we should give up trying?

I’d certainly make the case to say ‘no’. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that you have to keep making the necessary investments – in people and in process – to ensure that you can continue to offer your customers good customer service, which, in turn, drives loyalty, which ultimately leads to profits.

You can’t save your way to prosperity, but what you can do is continue with sound, strategic investments that support your medium and long-term strategic goals, as well as clearly demonstrate to your customer base that you practice what you preach.

For us at eStar, this sentiment is firmly cemented in our ESG (environmental, social, and governance) commitment. We operate an alternative-first culture, from opting for only hybrid or full electric as company cars, to rolling out full electric vans for parts delivery routes, installing and upgrading chargers at all sites – and sitting on the Knowsley Council Emergency Climate Committee.

But how can you demonstrate the results – and increased profits – to justify investing in ESG? Here are five routes to success.

1) Measure, measure, measure

Like the old saying goes, what gets measured, gets managed. If you don’t measure, how will you know if you have even moved in the right direction? Having a genuine ESG strategy will benefit all areas of wastage within a business – being sustainable has more than one meaning.

Like most businesses and homes, we make sure that we only use 100% renewable energy across our sites, but what we do is understand the equivalent of not doing that. For example, if we used a non-renewable energy source, we would be generating 227 tonnes of carbon emissions annually, which is the equivalent to 100,000 fire extinguishers or 200 hot air balloons.

In addition, all eStar’s company cars are hybrid or electric, and we continue to increase the number of our fleet of parts and service vehicles to electric  – but what does it actually mean? For our business, this has resulted in an 18% reduction in diesel purchased in 2023 compared to the prior year, which has saved 105 tonnes of CO2.

We have also converted or replaced EV chargers to be intelligent, providing detailed logs of our electricity consumption, and we know that around 12% of our electricity consumption was consumed via those chargers in 2023.

2) Think big

Often people talk about the low-hanging fruit, which perhaps refers in businesses to sorting out the recycling, or only printing on recycled paper and, while this type of activity is hugely important and not to be discouraged, I’m a firm believer in thinking big.

Have a five-year plan, not just the typical one- to three-year focus that most businesses have. And set decent, measurable targets, whether this is energy cost, carbon reduction, kWh per business transaction – be creative with what you’re going to measurement, but also realistic.

If you have no idea on where to start, focus on the largest area of waste first, which is usually vehicle or fleet costs or utilities, and then look at what you want to prioritise – cost, or carbon reduction first.

Part of thinking big is to also make sure you get buy in from the very top – as an MD, I believe that I need to drive the importance of having a sustainable focus for the business, which is then a Board agenda point each month that filters down across our senior leadership team to all colleagues, which also includes our Environmental Committee members.

3) The future is now

The focus for us is now on power upgrades and including photovoltaic panels when developing our sites, alongside further, faster EV chargers, but all of this requires some serious planning and future thinking today.

So that we can lead by example and work towards the target of 50% emissions reduction by 2030, we have started the process of commissioning a piece of work with GreenJam to look at the current availability of power, and to forecast future needs, with a view to ensure electric upgrades at all sites in readiness for electric trucks.

Flexibility is key to future-proofing the business ahead of the race to the EV transition deadline, as both Mercedes Benz AG and Daimler Truck have made clear commitments to investors regarding their ambitions to offer a net carbon-neutral value chain (car/van) or CO2-neutral from tank to wheel (truck/bus) in new vehicles by 2039.

While the work we have already done to support this all plays its part, showcasing many of the challenges and potential solutions for customers from a lived perspective, given the speed of different EV adoption curves, uncertainty around sales volumes, the power requirements of the spectrum of vehicles, emerging MB/Daimler standards, and developing eStar company policies, flexibility for our property portfolio is essential.

4) Invest to both save money and make money

In terms of improving our energy management, an automatic shut off at 6pm is programmed for heaters/aircon at our head office, LED lights have been installed, and devices have been installed on our workshop roller shutter doors at the three sites that use gas heating to automatically turn off the heating if the doors are open. Installing these devices at our Trafford Park site, for example, contributed to saving 6 tonnes of carbon emissions compared to the previous year, with five tonnes saved in Q4 2023 alone.

We also actively look for ways to reduce paper usage across the business. We digitalised our job cards, which was a significant investment that has saves the equivalent of 30 trees in paper each year. We have also upgraded printers across the business recently, installing print management software to further reduce the number of prints and paper used. This also massively supports our drive for a safer and more secure business, supporting our GDPR obligations.

5) Share the knowledge

I’m not saying ‘look at how great we are’ – I’m saying ‘ we’re happy to share our learnings’ because everyone wants our industry to do better. From the first mandatory environmental awareness online learning course we rolled out to all colleagues in 2021, to the launch of the Environmental Committee and a full-page monthly feature in our internal magazine in 2022 – to now designated ‘space’ in our new digital eStar Hub communications platform, sustainability is part of business as usual.

At eStar, we only see sustainability and ESG continuing to grow – going backwards for us is never an option and we are determined to lead by example so that we show colleagues, customers, and the wider community just what is possible.

If you don’t know where to start, ask – ask other businesses, ask experts, reach out to me – anything, but just make a start. It’s vital that every business takes this seriously and prioritise it now – your people, products, and profits really do depend on it.