Comparable Sustainability Standards and Reporting by Postal Operators

Postal service providers around the world are facing the challenge of making their operations compatible with the 1.5 degree target as defined by the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in 2015. Companies have already started to move towards sustainable operations using a variety of approaches. Corporate sustainability reporting is playing an increasingly important role in documenting their efforts to the public, calculating their carbon footprint and identifying areas for further action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But there are challenges for postal operators in calculating their emissions and for postal users, national regulators and policy makers in interpreting them. The standards used to do this leave a lot of scope for allocation of greenhouse gas emissions. This chapter aims to identify the specific challenges associated with calculating the carbon footprint of postal operators and the implications on the relevance of corporate sustainability reporting for postal users, regulators and policy makers.