Of the 12 companies in the Fortune Global 500 mail, freight, and shipping sectors whose environmental and sustainability reporting was analyzed (PDF) by the Roberts Environmental Center in 2006, Royal Mail Group (UK) was graded A+ and United Parcel Service (U.S.) and Deutsche Post (Germany) both received grades of A.
Almost half of the publicly traded firms on the list comprise the national postal services of major industrialized countries, including the United States Postal Service (with a grade of B-). According to the report, Federal Express (U.S.) “did surprisingly poorly in the ranking with a score of C-, outranked by all but Japan Post (Japan) and Post Italiane (Italy). In contrast to the top scorers, FedEx had (and continues to have) a minimal amount of quantitative environmental and social material on its web site.”
Of the top scorers, the report found that Royal Mail Group and Deutsche Post (which owns DHL as well as operating the German postal service) have both complex hyperlinked environmental and social web pages and detailed formal reports. “UPS confines its publications to hyperlinked web pages which tend to be less effective in our view, though they do not necessarily score lower,” the report states.
Overall grades:
Royal Mail Group (U.K.) A+
United Parcel Service (U.S.) A
Deutsche Post (Germany) A
Nippon Express (Japan) A-
Nippon Yusen (Japan) B+
TNT (Netherlands) B-
United States Postal Service (U.S.) B-
Groupe La Poste (France) C
A.P. MA?A??A?AA¸ller-MA?A??A?AA¦rsk Group (Denmark) C-
Federal Express (U.S.) C-
Japan Post (Japan) D
Poste Italiane (Italy) F
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