Environmental Sustainability Initiatives
Roadway participates in programs and processes for protecting and preserving the environment. We effectively and aggressively promote pollution prevention, waste reduction, and conservation across our daily operations.
Chemicals
- To prevent unwanted products from entering the waste stream or disposal process, chemical shipments deemed unacceptable by a shipper or consignee are recovered, repackaged, and offered for sale to the public through a physical location in Missouri and a virtual location on the Internet.
- Our comprehensive emergency-response capabilities include a 24/7 emergency hotline available to our facilities and customers.
Tires
- All tires are disposed of through EPA-registered disposal agents. Many go to tire recycling companies for further use as energy sources, playground mats and chips, mulch for landscaping, and road construction material.
Fuel
- We voluntarily use biodiesel fuel at select locations across the U.S., in addition to locations where use of biodiesel is mandated.
- ULSD (ultra-low-sulfur diesel) is used at all fueling locations, which enables cleaner emissions of NOx (nitrogen oxides) and particulate matter. Also, 20 LED (low-emission diesel) tractors (equipped with diesel particulate filters) were introduced into the Roadway fleet in 2007, with 240 low emission tractors on order for 2008.
- We continue to use and evaluate new engine oil and lubricant technologies to allow extended service intervals, greatly reducing waste product generation.
- We continue to evaluate fuel-savings initiatives and policies such as the use of computers to automatically shut down an idling engine, tractor speed governance, fuel-efficient tires and tread designs, and aerodynamic modifications to tractor and trailer configurations. Our practices to reduce emissions include limiting on-duty idling to 5-15 minutes, eliminating overnight idling by lodging drivers in hotels, and capping tractor speed at 62 mph.
Recycling efforts
- Oil filters are generally drained of oil and crushed at all garage locations, and the garage properly disposes of the canisters.
- Most Roadway locations purchase new batteries through a national distributor who properly disposes of the used ones.
- Recycling parts washers clean fluid for continuous use, minimizing the amount of waste generation.
- Each garage has a separate scrap metal hopper to separate scrap metal from other garage waste. The metal is purchased by a recycler for further use instead of going to a landfill.
- Most antifreeze is recycled and reused. The small quantities generated are picked up by a qualified waste hauler and further recycled.
- Waste motor oil is collected at the garages and picked up by a qualified oil hauler and recycled. Where permitted, waste oil is burned as fuel or in garage oil-fired heaters.
- In addition to office paper, oil, antifreeze, cleaning solvents, tires, and batteries, all Roadway facilities recycle aluminum, steel and unusable cardboard dunnage.
- Over 50% of our copy paper waste is recycled.
- To reduce energy consumption, we recycle fluorescent lamps from lighting fixtures in our buildings and replace with low-wattage lamps.
Services and the environment
- The use of e-commerce tools offered by Roadway to create electronic bills of lading, invoicing, and other documents in shipping transactions reduces paper consumption for all supply chain partners.
- Our transportation services for product returns and reverse logistics enable Roadway customers to prevent pollution and minimize waste in the movement of their shipments. For example, the use of reusable totes for chemical shipments eliminates the need to manufacture steel drums and dispose of used drums.
Affiliations
- We partner with several organizations to provide safe transportation of hazardous materials. These include the Haz-Mat One, Cooperative Hazardous Materials Enforcement Development program (COHMED) of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA), and Chemtrec.
- We participate in the SmartWaySM Transport Partnership. This voluntary program between various transportation industry sectors and the federal Environmental Protection Agency addresses key national concerns to improve energy security and energy savings.
