Purpose
Olleco runs a fleet of 250 delivery and collection vehicles all across Great Britain on the road every day recovering used cooking oil and food waste to be converted into renewable fuels. This fleet is Olleco’s biggest contributor to CO2e emissions. Some vehicles are now using biofuels to minimise their environmental impact, biodiesel, HVO and CNG are all in use in a variety of vehicles with more on the way and we are soon to get our first electric vehicle. To get the maximum impact from our conversion of organic waste into renewable fuels we want to use less energy for every tonne of material we collect, because the best energy is the energy you never use.
Action
To reduce the energy consumption of our vehicles we have two options; we can reduce the miles we travel and we can use less energy for each mile we travel. To reduce the miles we travel we have opened new depots in major population centres such as Manchester and rerouting our daily rounds to make them as efficient as possible so that there are fewer trucks travelling from our depots outside of Manchester to service the region. To reduce the energy we use for each mile travelled we are training our drivers in fuel-efficient driving, focusing on good driving behaviours such as keeping the revs low and less harsh braking, and we back this up with a weekly prize for the best driver and a monthly prize for the most-improved driver.
Impact
Since implementing these actions we have seen a 5% reduction in energy consumption for every tonne of waste we collect which means the biofuels produced from these waste have an even greater impact on avoiding CO2e emissions. In fact, for every tonne of CO2e emissions we produce, 20 tonnes of CO2e emissions are prevented by the use of the waste derived renewable fuels. The good driving behaviours the drivers learn also help to reduce wear and tear on the vehicles, reduce brake dust and tyre particulate emissions, reduce speeding and make our fleet safer.