After being invited to take part in the Willow review (government backed sustainability review for small business) I thought it was important to highlight the amazing and ground breaking work we do at Local Postal Solutions. Often, when we talk about small business and sustainability the first conclusion people draw is that it’s going to be more expensive. In the case of Local Postal Solutions that couldn’t be further from the truth. Our huge sustainability savings are not just of huge benefits to our local environment but the direct savings we have made as a result are passed directly on to our amazingly loyal clients.
To understand the considerable sustainability benefits we have achieved we need to follow the journey of just one of the many millions of letters that are processed every day. We operate solely on the Wirral at the moment, so I will use Wirral as the example.
Almost every piece of important mail we receive is sent locally hospital appointments, solicitors letters, estate agents, housing associations, dentist, opticians etc. For this example we are using a letter sent from a school.

Nearly all mail sent by schools is sent out to the immediate catchment area normally around a 1 mile radius from the school. In this case the recipient of the letter lives 400 metres away from the school.
The national mail networks current process.
Collect letter from school.
Transport letter by small van to local office which resides in the same postcode as school.
From the local office the letter is transported to the local hub in Prenton by small van.
At the local hub, the letter is transported to the areas main sorting office in Chester via a HGV.
At Chester the letter is automatically sorted and then begins its long journey by HGV back to the local office it was previously in at step 3.
Letter arrives at local office to be prepped ready for delivery.
Letter gets transported in small van ready to be delivered.
Letter delivered.
This process to deliver one letter 400m away from the sender has used 3 small van journeys, 2 HGV journeys travelled over 50 miles, passed through the hands of numerous different employees.
Local Postal Solutions current process.
1. Collect letter from school and sort on site.
2. Deliver letter.
This process has used 1 bicycle and 1 employee and travelled 400m
The improvements we have made to the process has not only hugely significant environmental benefits, the service has improved to a level which has never been achieved in this country. A huge improvement in sustainability an unparalleled improvement in delivery time and service. And really significantly and leading nicely on to part 2 of the sustainability blogs, the financial benefits are massive.
Not just a postman.
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