Acting as responsible corporate citizens.

At DHL Global Mail, we work diligently to fulfill the responsibilities of corporate citizenship. These efforts focus both on issues that affect the entire world, such as environmental protection, and local causes in the communities where we work. Acting in a socially responsible manner is one of the seven corporate values that Deutsche Post DHL, our parent company, has established for all its business units. We continually undertake activities reflecting our commitment to this value.

Preserving our resources and protecting the environment.

As the world’s leading mail and logistics services group, Deutsche Post DHL recognizes it must also take a leadership role in fighting climate change. Deutsche Post DHL is fulfilling this responsibility by becoming the first major logistics company to set a quantifiable climate protection target, with the GoGreen program. The goal of this groundbreaking initiative is to improve the carbon efficiency of all Deutsche Post DHL companies and business partners by 30% by 2020. For a complete overview of GoGreen, please visit Deutsche Post DHL online.

Global Mail is taking many steps to preserve resources and reduce waste and pollution, through the GoGreen program and other environmental efforts. These are a few of our initiatives:

  • We participate in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s SmartWaySM Transport Partnership and received the program’s highest possible score. SmartWay is an innovative collaboration between the EPA, the freight and logistics sectors and their customers, designed to improve energy efficiency and reduce air pollution. As a SmartWay Transport partner, Global Mail underwent an environmental assessment and received a score of 1.25—the highest possible mark, which indicates superior performance.
  • Our USPS Workshare partnership helps us uphold our commitment to climate protection. The USPS operates the country’s largest civilian fleet of alternative fuel vehicles and makes one-third of their deliveries on foot. Additionally, local USPS carriers deliver our domestic products to the final destination on their regular routes, with the rest of the mail. That means Global Mail shipments don’t require delivery vehicles to make extra emissions-producing trips.
  • We are committed to waste reduction, recycling and reuse at our offices and mail terminals. Waste reduction and recycling programs are in place at all our facilities nationwide, and we are moving away from traditional cardboard gaylords (containers for transporting mail and parcels). Our new gaylords—made of recycled materials—will last 7-10 years, while the cardboard versions can only be used up to three times before breaking down. Global Mail’s other efforts in this area include our ongoing work toward fully paper-free invoicing, and a program to help our catalog customers recycle their outdated inventory.

Supporting community organizations.

At the local level, Global Mail and our employees strive to support the communities where we maintain offices and mail processing facilities. We are actively involved in many local charities, giving of our time and resources in a variety ways. As an example of the wide range of projects we undertake, two of our initiatives for 2008 were participating in Habitat for Humanity as a build sponsor and helping a nonprofit organization near our U.S. headquarters ship dolls to children in Darfur.