CitySprint, has been awarded a 2-year national contract with the National Laboratory Service (NLS) which carries out robust environmental testing on behalf of The Environment Agency.

The Environment Agency is the leading public body for protecting and improving the environment in England and Wales and the NLS, which has 5 nationwide laboratories across the UK, carries out high quality analytical tests on land, air and water in order to assist in achieving this mission. Suppliers are vital in providing the goods and services that are needed to deliver the environmental vision of both organisations and its suppliers are key contributors in the achievement of environmental best practice.

Environmental awareness has always been high on CitySprint's agenda. With a courier fleet of over 1000 vehicles it recognises that its business practices have a substantial effect on the environment and as such has implemented a comprehensive environmental programme designed to minimise the impact that its business practices have on the environment.

CitySprint won the contract via a competitive tender process. CitySprint has a national network of 30 ServiceCentres across the UK which will enable it to service each of the 5 NLS laboratories effectively and efficiently.

CitySprint will be providing a range of services to the NLS on a daily basis including responsibility for the delivery of internal mail as well as environmental samples of river and lake water, soil and waste. These samples will be collected from the Environment Agency's regional depots and will be delivered, sometimes overnight, in refrigerated vehicles to one of the five NLS laboratories in the UK for testing. In addition, CitySprint will be responsible for delivering emergency samples, for example if there is a pollution incident, such as a lake being contaminated, time is of the essence. It is particularly essential in this type of scenario that the samples get to the laboratory as soon as possible as they may be used as legal evidence.

As part of its contract, CitySprint also offered the Environment Agency and the NLS a carbon neutral solution and has made a commitment to offset the carbon that is produced as a direct result of work that they carry out for them.

The amount of carbon produced by vehicles can be calculated by working out the number of miles travelled. CitySprint, the Environment Agency and the NLS have worked together to estimate the number of miles that CitySprint would travel over the period of one year while carrying out jobs for them. They then worked out how much it would cost to offset the carbon produced in that year. The traditional method of offsetting carbon is to plant trees which will then absorb the carbon. However CitySprint's Director of Regional ServiceCentres, Ben Haynes, came up with a more innovative alternative.

Ben explains: "Instead of taking the more traditional offsetting route of planting trees, CitySprint has taken a more innovative approach as agreed with the Environment Agency and the NLS.  We are going to take the equivalent amount of money for traditional offsetting and re-invest it in our business in carbon reduction technologies in order to stop the carbon being produced in the first place. This will take the form of energy efficiency measures for our buildings and, in the future, will extend to trials of the latest technologies within our fleet vehicles. This commitment to mitigate the carbon from the work that CitySprint does for this client, and to reduce our overall carbon footprint will take place year on year."