HP Australia says it has reduced the carbon footprint of its Imaging & Printing Group (IPG) after revising its supply chain model.

According to Carbon Offset Daily, the company claims to have reduced carbon emissions on products sourced by sea freight by 41%, after shifting its product port-of-entry from Fremantle to Melbourne and Sydney in order to be closer to most of its customers on the eastern seaboard, thus cutting down rail and road freight usage.

Previously, all IPG hardware was being delivered nationally from HP’s Central Distribution Office in Sydney, with 40% of all supplies landing in Fremantle and then being delivered via rail to customers across Australia. 40% of hardware from the CDO was also being delivered to Melbourne by truck. Previous truck deliveries from the CDO were not optimised to use larger trucks and HP was estimated to have emitted 6,400 tonnes of CO2 in 2008.

“We conducted a study with our worldwide office at the end of our third quarter in July and found that there has been a dramatic decrease in our environmental footprint since we have implemented the new supply chain model,” said IPG South Pacific vice president Richard Bailey.

“The new supply chain model has saved over 2,600 tonnes of CO2 emitted by HP Australia over the last year, which equates to 21.6 acres of forest preserved from deforestation or 66,666 trees grown for 10 years from seedlings.”

The company has also adopted a policy of using trucks with a higher storage capacity, therefore reducing emissions from road freight to 3,776 tonnes per annum.

HP now says it is aiming to reduce sea freight emissions by a further 20% by 2013.