Steps to Zero

Royal Mail and GLS’ environmental strategies include pathways, targets and mitigating actions that will help us reduce our environmental footprint and play our part in the transition to a low-carbon future while offering a wide range of green solutions to our customers.

Details on Royal Mail's strategy can be found below and details on GLS's strategy, Climate Protect can be found here. 

 

Steps to Zero 

Steps to Zero is Royal Mail's environment strategy to achieve net zero by 2040. On the journey to achieving net zero, we will reduce our average emissions per parcel to 50gCO2e.

Royal Mail is already the UK’s greenest option for letters and parcels* but we know we need to go much further and faster in decarbonising our business and driving wider change.

With Steps to Zero, we accelerate our net zero ambition to 2040 and align it to the latest climate science, and a 1.5°C decarbonisation pathway to reduce our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Scopes 1, 2 and 3)

 

*Based on publicly available reported gCO2e per parcel from other UK parcel operators.

Steps to Zero has four pillars:


 

Net zero deliveries

Optimising our on-foot delivery methods while electrifying our delivery vehicles.

As the UK’s Universal Service Provider, we deliver to around 32 million addresses every day.

Our final-mile delivery network, and the vehicles supporting it, is the largest in the UK.

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Net zero operations

Re-designing an efficient, parcels focused network that utilises low-carbon transport modes and drives energy efficiency in our buildings.

Our international, national, and local distribution networks support deliveries by conveying mail across the country and beyond.

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Making circular happen

Transforming our operations to embrace circularity by reducing our operational waste and designing more sustainable customer products.

We aim to eliminate materials, particularly virgin and raw resources, to reduce the waste we and our

communities generate through our services.

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Collaboration for action

Harnessing our size, scale, and reputation to play a positive role in delivering a low-carbon future in our industry, with our workforce and in our supply chain. Royal Mail recognises that achieving net zero and supporting climate ambition more broadly will require profound industry change through close collaboration and partnerships.

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Net Zero by 2040

Our net zero and interim decarbonisation targets are being reviewed for validation by the Science-Based Targets initiative. This validation will provide confidence to our customers that we have an ambitious target which is aligned to the latest climate science, and a 1.5°C decarbonisation pathway to reduce our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across all Scopes.

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Our environmental performance

Royal Mail’s total emissions were 1,090KtCO2e. in the year, representing an overall reduction of 7% on our base-year in 2020-21.

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