The greening of Sydney
BY RON HAMMERTON | 18th Sep 2012
Sydney City Council, which won the Australasian Fleet Management Association (AFMA) 2012 Fleet Environment Award this week, has already slashed its vehicle fleet emissions by 20 per cent in four years – two years ahead of its self-imposed 2014 deadline – while also saving almost $2 million in running costs in the same time frame.
The commitment to greener motoring was made as part of the city council’s Sustainable Sydney 2030 plan announced in 2008, and includes a wide range of actions to cut its motor vehicle footprint.
Overall fleet numbers have been reduced by 35 per cent – from 600 vehicles to 450 – by re-organising the ways vehicles are used, including sharing of cars, and driver training to minimise fuel use.
Despite the cuts, council records show that fleet mileage has fallen only six per cent.
Under its fleet purchasing policy, environmental impact is a major consideration, leading to the acquisition of 43 hybrid cars, 20 diesel-electric hybrid trucks and four full-electric cars, as well as smaller and more efficient vehicles such as small diesel vans.
The electric car fleet – which the council plans to expand to 10 vehicles by the end of this financial year before taking that to about 80 in the next few years – is recharged using solar power from a huge array of 250 panels on the Town Hall roof.
According to the council’s successful submission for the AFMA award, the attention to vehicle tailpipe cleanliness also extends to 84 older trucks, including garbage trucks, road sweepers and footpath cleaners which have been fitted with new exhaust systems with particulate filters to bring them up to Euro 4 emissions standard, reducing NOx and particulates emissions by up to 60 per cent.
As well, the council has even installed two storage tanks at its depots for bio-diesel made from recycled cooking oils and tallow to run in its trucks, which must be Euro 5 when bought new.
The award, which is offered by AFMA to encourage its member organisations to adopt best-practice environmental vehicle management regimes, was collected by council staffer Bob Smith, who joked that it was difficult to see where improvement could be made after 2014.
The AFMA Fleet Manager of the Year award went to UnitingCare Queensland’s fleet manager Mark Stephens for his success in helping another charitable organisation, Lifeline, make major savings on its fleet running costs.
Mr Stephens’ organisation absorbed LifeLine’s 534-vehicle fleet into UnitingCare’s own fleet, to create a 2200 vehicle fleet, while also reorganising its management to make savings that should amount to about $500,000 this year – money that can be put back into LifeLine’s activities.
AFMA’s Fleet Safety Award went to Coca-Cola Amatil New Zealand, which adopted a “zero-harm culture” to cut its fleet driver accident rate in a company of 1100 employees and 400 contractors.
The actions resulted in a 31 per cent reduction in the incident rate and more than $100,000 in fleet cost savings since 2010, as well as big reduction in lost days due to injury.
Collecting the award on behalf of the company, national health and safety manager Catherine Hill said New Zealand had one of the highest rates of workplace accidents in the OECD, costing the lives of 100 workers a year as well as 200,000 injuries.
She said the company took a number of actions to rein in its own “alarming rate of accidents”, including driver training, five-star car purchase policy and vehicle inspections every month.
However, she said the biggest breakthrough had been a commitment from the top down in the company to change the safety culture – a commitment taken along with 100 other NZ businesses in 2010.
“Longevity (of safety improvements) is in the culture,” she said.