Environmental Leader

McKesson Corp. continues to gain a better understanding of its emissions, energy consumption and water consumption companywide. In the firm’s 2008-2009 Corporate Citizenship Report, the company tracked energy consumption and CO2 emissions at 49 facilities, representing 64 percent of its U.S. real estate footprint, and water consumption for 35 facilities, representing 47 percent of its U.S. footprint. Based on these facilities, the company has cut its energy use by less than 1 percent, CO2 per square foot by almost 8 percent, and water consumption by nearly 40 percent.

The framework of the company’s environmental sustainability efforts focus on four areas: transportation and emissions, recycling and waste, energy efficiency and encouraging sustainability.

In the area of fleet transportation, McKesson introduced more fuel-efficient vehicle options for the U.S. pharmaceutical sales fleet. The adoption of more fuel-efficient vehicles is expected to reduce annual CO2 emissions by 20 percent and potentially save McKesson approximately $300,000 in fiscal year 2010.

In FY2009, the company’s total fuel consumption increased to 3,231 gallons from 3,075 gallons in FY2008, which also resulted in higher CO2 emissions of 30,063 metric tons, up from 29,578 metric tons in FY2008.

In fiscal year (FY) 2009, the nation’s oldest and largest healthcare services and IT company has more than doubled the number of facilities included in its greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) report since FY2006. This includes 49 facilities, representing 64 percent of its U.S. real estate footprint. Building energy consumption fell slightly from 155,894 to 155,263 MWh in FY2009, compared to the previous fiscal year. CO2 emissions also dropped over the same time period from 24.11 to 22.31 lbs CO2 per square foot.

The company hopes to target energy reduction efforts going forward as it collects additional information regarding its building energy consumption and data.

In this year’s report, McKesson has collected for the first time energy consumption and related emissions data for one of its data centers but decided not to break out energy consumption and emissions data for this type of facility until it can capture information for additional data centers.

For the first time, McKesson also included CO2 emissions data from its airline business travel. CO2 emissions from business air travel dropped from 32,892 metric tons in FY2008 to 27,632 metric tons in FY2009. The company encourages employees to use teleconferencing and videoconferencing whenever possible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to contain travel costs.

McKesson is also trying to improve its data concerning water usage. In FY2009, the company tracked consumption for 35 facilities, representing 47 percent of its U.S. real estate footprint. In FY09, these facilities consumed 51,962,983 gallons of water, down from 72,049,473 gallons in the previous fiscal year.

The company also found an error in the data reported in its last Corporate Citizenship Report, which is why the gallons per square foot metric has changed for fiscal years 2006 and 2007.

McKesson is in the process of meeting the United States Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for its headquarters facility. In August, McKesson unveiled its first LEED-certified pharmaceutical distribution center located in the Chicago, Ill. area.

The distribution center received LEED new construction certification for its use of recycled building materials, low-flow water fixtures, natural landscaping, motion-controlled lighting and parking for fuel-efficient vehicles.

In FY2009, the company consolidated three data center facilities into one, which reduced the total number of servers as well as allowed the company to evaluate new server and virtualization technologies. The consolidation effort is expected to reduce the company’s energy consumption by 525,600 kWh with an estimated savings of approximately $65,000 per year in energy costs alone.