Fleet News Group podcast host Caroline Falls talks with Lee Sauerwald, president of the Australian Fleet Management Association, for the last recording of 2022, about his own award winning fleet sustainability practices.
“Right back in probably 2010 is when we first started on our journey. And we’ve been on a carbon reduction path ever since,” said Sauerwald, adding that Uniting Communities where he was responsible for fleet at the time was ruled carbon neutral as early as 2015. He said the Adelaide based non profit, of which Sauerwald is now executive manager corporate services, is working towards a goal to be net zero by 2035.
(What’s the difference between carbon neutral and net zero? Carbon neutral is where an organisation measures its carbon emissions and buys offsets — such as tree plantings — whereas to achieve net zero an organisation is required to have actually taken steps to cut them through efficiency, electrification etcetera.)
Sauerwald said he’s seen interest in sustainability, or pro environmental practices, in fleets ebb and flow over the past decade. “But I’ve certainly noticed a marked change in just the last few years.
“That topic of sustainability is now really dominating,” he said, adding, “It was really evident from the speakers, the topics, the products that were on show,” at the 2022 AfMA conference.
“It wasn’t just you know, a few on the corner here and there. They actually were starting to become the main focus. So I can certainly see that that’s the direction that it’s heading and there’s quite a few organisations that are now really looking closer at this and setting their own sustainability targets.”
Uniting Communities, which provides health, legal and caring services to more than 80,000 South Australians, own fleet comprises about 135 vehicles, most of them passenger vehicles. There are also hundreds of grey fleet vehicles as volunteers and other officer use their private vehicles for work.
Sauerwald said of the company owned vehicles almost 100 percent of them are hybrid petrol electric. He said grey fleet users are encouraged to transition to low-emission vehicles by giving them access to company cars being retired via an auction process. “We’re always trying to get them into lower emitting vehicles where we can as part of our carbon footprint measurement.”
Sauerwald also talks about the wider lens on sustainability: that it’s not just environmental, but also looks at social and economic angles.
“It’s people, planet and profit,” said Sauerwald. “And whatever order you put them in, we often find that they actually are mutually beneficial to one another, and not mutually exclusive.”
In August, Uniting Communities reported it had reduced its emissions by 30 percent, resulting in a savings of some $1.5 million.
“We found that by having a focus on environmental sustainability, we’ve actually been able to reduce our costs, particularly in our fleet, but across all of our operations because it’s all about being smarter in using your energy resources as efficiently as you can.”
