Michelle Livingstone, Vice President, Transportation, for The Home Depot, and an AWESOME Advisor, oversees her company’s shipping network and ensures the carriers it hires meet strict sustainability guidelines. In an interview with Mark Solomon for DC Velocity, Michelle says SmartWay scores are a key determinant in the carrier selection process.
The Home Depot is a charter member of SmartWay, the carbon-reduction program developed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
By focusing on sustainability, Home Depot was able in 2015 to ship 4,000 fewer trucks by optimizing their trailer cube and reduce carbon emissions by 4,132 metric tons. Michelle explained that environmental improvements were a result of a combination of building more truckloads out of what were previously parcel or LTL shipments, a shift to intermodal, and changing Home Depot’s network infrastructure.
According to the article, “transportation accounted for about a quarter of all sources of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2014, which was the last year for which EPA has full-year data.” In Michelle’s view, the goal of reducing emissions by of 2 to 5 percent a year, while increasing revenue would be “meaningful and impactful.”