Transporting our products from their manufacturing location to your home, supplying energy to our stores or warehouses: all our activities have an impact on the environment. To reduce it, we have chosen to develop the use of renewable energies and take action on transport.
It was necessary to make a transition towards renewable energy, to reduce our buildings' environmental impact. In September 2018, we subsequently joined the worldwide RE100 initiative. We have committed to sourcing 100% of our electricity from renewable energy by 2026. A measure that will apply to all our commercial and logistics sites around the world.
The idea is to produce solar panel powered energy on our sites, where possible, or to buy renewable energy through purchase agreements with certificates of origin.
Currently, 35 energy managers distributed in different countries are mobilized to achieve this objective.
In a product's life cycle, transport is not the most polluting stage. We have subsequently chosen to concentrate our efforts, as a priority, on our product design and manufacturing to reduce our carbon footprint.
This hasn't prevented us from taking measures relating to the transport part.
The purpose of this project is to perform a worldwide assessment, allowing us to precisely identify the areas for improvements and set ourselves goals for the years to come.
Air transport has the greatest impact in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2023, DECATHLON strengthened its collaboration with all sectors of its value chain in order to reduce the share of air transport in its transport choices. This means more closely monitoring transport requests, made possible by incorporating emission reduction objectives into the job descriptions of certain key positions. Thanks to this work, DECATHLON was able to stay within its annual CO2 air budget for 2023, with the volume of DECATHLON products transported by air falling from 0.4% in 2022 to 0.03% in 2023.
So what are the alternatives?
Transferring from air flows to rail flows. An option already made possible with railway lines connecting France to Germany, Russia and China, for example.
To reduce the impact of road transport, DECATHLON uses contracts with carriers as leverage to decarbonise the transport of finished products. Training purchasing managers is at the heart of the transport decarbonation strategy, to ensure they are able to establish contracts with road hauliers, using a framework for the purchase of biofuels. This has enabled the company to optimise the use of road transport and to develop partnerships with carriers to reduce emissions from this mode of transport.
We believe in the principle of subsidiarity because every region has their own specific challenges and issues. It means the decisions should be taken as closely as possible to where they have an impact. We are more involved in our decision making, and that makes our measures relevant to everyone's needs. As a result, each country then decides on measures that they want to conduct locally.
Each year we publish our Non-Financial Reporting Declaration (NRFD). This document lists all our sustainable development initiatives.
