Last February, the EVE program (Voluntary commitments for the environment – transport and logistics) highlighted 14 companies which distinguished themselves in the concrete reduction of their greenhouse gas emissions. Among them: the Étoile Routière group, in La Flèche (72). The opportunity to take stock of your environmental strategy.
Specializing in temperature-controlled transport and logistics since 1949, the Étoile Routière group, based in Sarthe and Loiret (four agencies; 350 employees; €67 million turnover), is registered with the Objectif charter. CO2 in 2019, before obtaining the label in March 2022. It is in this context that the company was rewarded with the trophy for best environmental performance (category of more than 50 employees) during the last Rendez-Vous EVE, in February. Enough to crown more than ten years of actions.
A plural action
The Étoile Routière group first launched an environmental strategy by paying particular attention to the location of its structures along the highway, in order to optimize and reduce the number of kilometers traveled. Then, other actions emerged: heat recovery to defrost the dock evaporators; rainwater recovery for vehicle washing; 100% LED lighting; installation of solar panels (500 kWp) on the Bailleul site (72) having made it possible to save “more than five tonnes of CO2 between mid-January and mid-May 2023”, according to the QSE manager Vincent Dohollou. The group then committed to reducing the environmental impact of its rolling stock by equipping vehicles with low-consumption tires, with more efficient technologies (robotic boxes, deflectors, etc.), or by gradually generalizing the operation of refrigeration units through a power supply. “In 2021, as part of the outsourced management of our tire fleet, 268 tires were regrooved and 449 retreads were purchased, representing a saving of 95 tonnes of CO2.” Other action: the greening of the fleet (100% of tractors are Euro 6). The first tests with exclusive B100 started in 2020. Today, a third of the vehicles are affected: 49 tractors and 5 rigids. “The diversification of our fuels with the installation of three B100 tanks, the retrofit of tractors to accept this energy and the equipping of our B100 tractors with larger tanks to guarantee sufficient autonomy on all of our tours regional and national… All this directly translated into a major reduction in our environmental impact,” continues Vincent Dohollou, who mentions a saving of around 4,074 tonnes of CO2 in 2022 and a reduction of more than 20% in emissions linked to the rolling stock in five years (23,000 tonnes of CO2 in 2018 compared to 18,260 tonnes in 2022). At the same time, the Étoile Routière group intends to take advantage of the merger with the Malherbe group (since last December) to go even further. “Our environmental strategies are complementary, which will give us additional momentum”, underlines the QSE manager.
Thus, Étoile Routière will continue and accelerate the renewal of its motor vehicle fleet, going from five to three years. And this, while promoting energy diversity. As such, the group intends to benefit from feedback from Malherbe on biogas, XTL-HVO and even hydrogen, to study alternatives. Finally, other initiatives carried out at Malherbe could also be duplicated, such as challenging drivers on their behavioral scores.