Sim-O

Ocado, online grocery home delivery service, claim on their vans that they are ‘as green as walking to the supermarket’ and on their website has the statement…

With such a lean, efficient operation, we’ve been able to lower our carbon emissions to the point where each Ocado delivery now has a lower carbon footprint (CO2 per £ of sales) than walking to a supermarket.

I’m buggered if I think how driving a van can produce less CO2 than walking, especially as at the moment they are using biodiesel and not something like hydrogen fuel cells which produce only water (not counting all the CO2 produced in the ‘manufacture’ of the hydrogen). I wouldn’t have given it much thought if the claim had been nearly as little as walking, but less…?

So I sent them an email…

To: ocado@ocado.com
from: Sim-O
Subject: your CO2 output

Sri or Madam,

On your vans you claim…

We’re as green as walking to the supermarket

and your website also carries the statement…

With such a lean, efficient operation, we’ve been able to lower our carbon emissions to the point where each Ocado delivery now has a lower carbon footprint (CO2 per £ of sales) than walking to a supermarket.

Could you substantiate that claim, please. It is a big claim and it has to be true otherwise you would not be able to make it, but I am puzzled as to how.

What are you counting as producing CO2 in each type of journey? How far back through the delivery chain are you going? What, exactly, are you comparing for each type of journey?

What are the figures and the maths that enable you to make such a claim?

Kind Regards

I’m not trying make a point, get some info so I can point my finger and yell ‘Cpaitalist Charlatan Pigs!’, but genuinely puzzled. Just by the fact that the van has a driver puts the van on an equal footing with the pedestrian. Doesn’t it?

Tagged CO2, corporate responsibility, environment, letter writing, ocado

§ 3 Responses to people pollute more than vans"

• Tweets that mention people pollute more than vans | Sim-O -- Topsy.com says:

  19 September 2009 at 5:15 pm

  […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Sim-O. Sim-O said: New blog post: people pollute more than vans http://bit.ly/7V8da […]

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• Greener than walking | Sim-O says:

  19 September 2009 at 8:30 pm

  […] was just thinking this morning about how much longer I would have to wait for a reply to this email to Ocado about their claim to be ‘as green as walking to the supermarket’ when early this […]

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• Charlie Wilson says:

  20 May 2010 at 2:07 am

  Hydrogen Fuel is very promising, i only hope that we can mass produce soon enough.-‘.

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