environment
l
interview
Juan José Freijo, director of sustainability for CHEP EMEA, talks to us about his job, about the importance of sustainability and how the pooling market is currently performing.
Green pallets
director of sustainability, Juan José leads a team specifically formed to gradually reduce CHEP’s environmental footprint and to increase the use of sustainable practices.
ShD: What are the key responsibilities in your role? Juan José Freijo (JJF): This job gives me a great opportunity to devote myself even more fully to an area that is very interesting, one that has grown in importance over recent years and which also fascinates me personally. It involves the opportunity to implement an ambitious programme across a large region like CHEP EMEA, where individual countries have different legislation, business methods and cultures. My principal task is to identify the best practices in each country and see how they can be adapted in other regions as well as to research new opportunities and not to be hampered by geographical or organisational boundaries.
J
uan José Freijo has a Doctorate in Physics and a Master’s degree in Engineering and
Environmental Management from the EOI (Madrid School of Industrial Organization). He is currently Director of Sustainability for CHEP EMEA. Freijo joined the planning and logistics area of CHEP in 2005, having previously held various senior posts at Deloitte and Lucent Technologies. As
42 ShD February 2012
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ShD: Are there likely to be any changes in strategy? JJF: Backing sustainability is nothing new for CHEP. We want to step up our work on reaching some targets that are moving up the environmental agenda, such as the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. There is virtually unanimous agreement that this will be the major environmental theme in the years to come, especially in the European Union.
Although at CHEP we have for some
time focussed on reducing our CO2 emissions, this activity will become an even more central element of our strategy, and we are also increasingly in a position to help other players in the supply chain achieve their own objectives. We are working together and learning together.
ShD: How would you describe the current logistics services market in general and the pooling systems in particular? JJF: The logistics sector has not been immune from the pan-European economic crisis that has created difficult trading conditions across most business sectors. For many
organisations, the drop in turnover has created a need to look for innovative solutions based on efficiency increases. So, particularly in the larger, more modern firms which have a solid long- term vision, the sustainability programmes have acquired additional importance as it has been shown that they need not impose additional cost burdens but instead can act as major generators of efficiencies which go way beyond bringing just ethical and social benefits.
It makes sound business sense to consider environmental sustainability as a generator of savings. Once, this was considered a contradiction but now it is being increasingly realised that the two can go hand in hand. CHEP fits into this scheme of things very well as our business model is based on the continuous re-use of our equipment.
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