Ireland’s largest independent forecourt retailer, which has 80 sites in Ireland and the UK, has signed a deal with an Irish green procurement firm to measure and track carbon emissions.

Under the programme Applegreen will use Nootrol’s supply chain and green procurement management cloud computing service to collaborate, share and exchange sustainability and carbon performance data across its supply chain partners.

The news follows a recent report by management and technology consultancy BearingPoint which found that green supply chain initiatives across Europe are being increasingly driven by bottom line issues rather than regulation.

Applegreen’s new climate change and green procurement standard encourages suppliers to use energy efficiently and reduce carbon during the production, delivery, use and disposal of products and services supplied to the company.

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Applegreen’s Climate Change and Green Procurement standard will encourage suppliers to: have a policy in place to address the challenge of climate change; actively measure and report carbon; and set challenging targets to reduce carbon emissions and to report on progress.

Frank Pyne, Applegreen Sustainability spokesperson on the project, said: “This is not something that we’re legally obliged to do but we see it as an important component to delivering on our commitments on carbon reduction. As a significant business in the UK and Ireland we feel we have a responsibility to demonstrate leadership in the area of climate change.”

Mark Kearns, Chief Exective Officer of Nootrol added: “Although there is currently no mandatory obligation to report a company’s carbon emissions there is increased public, investor and stakeholder pressure to integrate carbon management within Corporate Social Responsibility programmes that usually involve suppliers. More and more companies are now realising that by measuring their carbon emissions substantial cost savings can be generated for both businesses and suppliers.”

(BMcN/GK)