Net Zero

Huge news at TBM HQ: from July 1st, we’re moving to net zero for international shipments. Working with our delivery partner UPS, we’re offsetting carbon on all orders fulfilled outside the island of Ireland. 

Clients who choose UPS for international delivery will avail of a fast service to their customer at the most competitive rate we’ve ever offered. Yes, you read that part right. You’ll be putting your products into your customers’ hands at no extra cost – to you, or to the planet. 

So, it’s a win-win for our customers: not only are they doing the right thing for the environment, they’re not incurring extra costs that they either need to absorb, or pass on to their own customers. 

Offsetting CO2 emissions on 100,000 shipments

It’s a significant move for us at TBM Solution, too. Based on our estimations, we’ll be offsetting greenhouse gas emissions for close to 100,000 international shipments from our Dublin facility alone. 

We’re delighted to be working with a globally recognised market leader like UPS. From our earliest discussions, we’ve been really impressed with their commitment to transparency and openness. We liked the model they use because of how it’s calculated, published, and independently verified. If you want to find out more about the mechanisms that UPS uses for its carbon neutral process, it’s all on this page. 

We’ve also in discussions with other carriers about what they can offer, and we’ll keep you posted when those agreements are in place. 

Our journey to net zero

It’s important to say that we started our net zero journey in the latter part of last year. We were all hearing the stories coming out of the COP27 conference about the worsening climate crisis. We’d also been having conversations with customers like Ocean Bottle, who are really sustainability focused. They’re looking at moving to a ‘zero tolerance’ on emissions for the ‘first mile’, eliminating air freight for the first mile from the factory to warehouse. 

It made us think: what could we do as a supply chain company to minimise our own carbon footprint? Funded by a small surcharge on our price file, we’ve been investigating many different green options such as installing solar panels to power the warehouse, or upgrading our vans to electric power. Net zero international shipments are just one of several net zero initiatives we’re pursuing. 

Obviously, we have to be practical. Consumer expectations are ‘I order today and I’ll have it tomorrow’. So we have to work with our partners and find out how we manage those international shipments best. We felt UPS’ approach to offset carbon was the most suitable, and it means that customers don’t lose out because of longer wait times. 

As anyone who’s spent time on our website will know, we believe in being open about the number of warehouses we have, our orders shipped over the last 12 months, and our accuracy in fulfilling those orders. So we’re following through by taking the same approach to our net zero initiative. 

Every month, we’ll get a report on how much carbon we’re offsetting and we can share that information with customers on request. We’ll also receive a certificate every year on the amount of CO2 we’re taking out of the air.