Launched on World Environment Day (5TH June 2020) and designed to support the United Nation’s Decade of Action* campaign, Prologis will extend its 12-year UK partnership with climate change charity Cool Earth, and sustainability certification company The Planet Mark. The aim is to raise sustainability standards across the European industrial property sector and drive meaningful change through social empowerment.
From June 2020, Prologis will work with climate change charity Cool Earth to fund the protection of rainforests. The programme will help Cool Earth to protect an area of rainforest 31 times larger than the area of each building. As a part of our AMC approach (Avoid, Mitigate and Compensate), this partnership will help Prologis mitigate the impact of unavoidable embodied carbon emissions in its new buildings across Europe. The Cool Earth solution is contributing to complete our needs when local solutions have not been able to cancel the full emissions.
Although distant from our daily lives, rainforests play a key part in global climate. Rainforest trees lock in a quarter of the world’s carbon emissions and generate moisture, which travels around the world, and accounts for a fifth of the planet’s fresh water. Rainforests also protect over six million species of plants and animals (with many still undiscovered), forming an important ecosystem which is essential to our survival.
Over the past 12 years, through its partnership with Cool Earth and The Planet Mark, Prologis UK has been helping to protect 12,500 acres of rainforest in Peru and Papua New Guinea. Prologis is helping rainforest communities to lock in 3.5 million tons of carbon dioxide by protecting 3.2 million trees, mitigating an estimated 600,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions. As part of this partnership, the company has also educated 7,500 pupils at schools close to its logistics parks throughout the UK with sustainability workshops. Delivered by The Eden Project, these workshops are offered free of charge to local schools and aim to help children understand the important role they can all play in protecting the planet.
Olivier Barge, Head of project management & innovation, Southern Europe, Prologis declares, “Prologis has a long-standing and enduring commitment to ESG, and we strive to go above and beyond industry standards in terms of sustainability. Embodied carbon – which is the carbon emitted when manufacturing building materials and during the construction of a new building – has to be avoided and mitigated through good design, but it cannot be 100% eliminated altogether. That is why we are both proud and humbled by this partnership. It is a useful addition to the solutions already implemented locally, as we know that as a company we can, and must, do more to limit carbon emissions during and after the construction of our buildings.”
Matthew Owen, director of climate change charity, Cool Earth said: “Prologis has made, and continues to make, a powerful contribution to sustainable development through measuring and reducing the whole-life carbon emissions of its buildings. No other developer has gone this far.
“This is the Decade of Action, where every institution and every individual must contribute to society, tackling climate change and reversing biodiversity loss. To have a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C, we need to reduce carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2030. This year must usher in a decade of ambitious action to deliver these global goals by 2030.”
Steve Malkin, CEO of Planet First and founder of The Planet Mark said: “Prologis’ commitment to sustainability demonstrates true leadership in its field and is helping to raise standards across the industry.
“We very much hope that others will follow Prologis’ example so that in the next 10 years, we can make this world, our home and our civilisation, happier, safer and more sustainable.”
What is Prologis’ approach to limit carbon emissions?
• Avoid: measures taken to avoid creating impacts from the outset. At Prologis, detectors and dimmers on lighting systems are measures taken to achieve such objective.
• Mitigate: measures taken to reduce the intensity or the duration of impacts that cannot be completely avoided. Prologis is implementing LED lighting that consumes less energy and is installing solar panels in order to achieve that.
• Compensate: measures taken to compensate impacts that cannot be avoided or mitigated. Prologis has been doing this for a few years, notably in creating a carbon well in France (Isère) or its partnership will Cool Earth.