Podcast: Living Logistics

Vaccines against COVID-19 are in development, but their availability to end the pandemic depends on effective planning and partnerships.

Early in the coronavirus pandemic, the importance of medical products, such as personal protective equipment (PPE), became painfully clear. In many places, disruptions in the supply chain caused major problems in providing frontline workers with the equipment they desperately needed to care for people and save lives.

Although supplies of PPE are flowing better now, the work to improve the medical-products supply chain is by no means finished. Vaccines are in development, but their ability to end this pandemic depends on effective supply chains that can connect production locations to the public.

In early September, logistics company DHL published a study examining the foreseeable challenges to secure stable supply chains for vaccines and medical goods during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond. Tackling the unprecedented conditions requires teamwork, informed planning and effective partnerships. In an interview, Katja Busch, Chief Commercial Officer and Head of Customer Solutions & Innovation at DPDHL Group, explains why.

Links
DHL White Paper – Delivering pandemic resilience

At a warehouse near a major logistics hub there's literally a beehive of activity.

Meet two people who've been bitten by the beekeeping bug. Jan Beullens keeps hives at his workplace, a warehouse near Brussels Airport. Raluca Witowski-Berthold started beekeeping on the balcony of an apartment building. She gives practical tips for the beginning beekeeper.

Join us on a visit to two urban beekeeping enthusiasts: Jan Beullens has placed beehives on the grounds of a DHL warehouse close to the Brussels airport, and other DHL properties besides. Beullens was supported by DHL in his mission to spread the word about bee conservation. His efforts help the environment thrive, while providing a sweet message of sustainability to DHL's customers, too.

You'll also meet Raluca Witowski-Berthold. An early convert to urban beekeeping, she offers tips for the beginning beekeeper and explains why keeping a colony on an apartment balcony is such a rewarding task.

Listen to the podcast to find out why bees are so important to the future of the planet, how beekeeping and environmentalism go hand in hand – and what NOT to do if a bee crawls into your pants.

Links
More bad buzz for bees: Record number of honeybee colonies died last winter
Bees: Many British pollinating insects in decline, study shows
Bees are dying, but there is one thing we can do

Literature
Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees,  Thor Hanson
The Bee Manual: The Complete Step-by-Step Guide to Keeping Bees (New Ed), Claire Waring, Adrian Waring, and Bill Turnbull

Can any one person's actions help save the environment? Meet people making a difference.

Saving the environment and halting climate change? It's a tall order – so can any one person's actions really make a difference? Meet DHL employees around the world who are proving just how big an impact each one of us can have.

Approximately 550,000 people work for Deutsche Post DHL Group. Taken together, this huge family of employees can make a significant contribution to protecting the environment and keeping climate change in check. Realizing this, the company responded with its own sustainability program: GoGreen. One goal of the program is to certify 80% of employees as environment experts – called "GoGreen Specialists" – over a five-year period. This aims to help Deutsche Post DHL Group achieve its target of net-zero logistics emissions by the year 2050.

In this episode, we focus on DHL's effort to promote greater awareness for climate and environment issues. And we introduce you to employees around the world who are already green at heart – fully committed to the GoGreen cause. Come meet the people who fish garbage out of the ocean in Malaysia, plant trees in Prague, and monitor air quality in Milan.

Links
Project Aware
Scuba Junkie Malaysia blog

Meet the movers and shakers behind TRAILAR, a company using the sun’s energy to make trucks greener.

TRAILAR is a young company using the sun’s energy to make trucks greener. It was a fledgling idea in 2017. Now, three years later, the company’s product is installed on about 1,000 trucks – helping them save on emissions and CO₂.

TRAILAR is a young company that harnesses solar power to make trucks greener. In 2017, two DHL colleagues had an idea for an innovative product that could help trucks tap into the sun’s energy to save fuel and CO₂. The idea became reality, and the startup is now a subsidiary of DHL. By 2019, the system was already installed on more than 1,000 vehicles worldwide. In this episode of the podcast, learn about the founders’ revolutionary idea, the story of the startup, and how trucks are becoming more eco-friendly with the help of TRAILAR’s solar mats.

Links
TRAILAR website
International Energy Agency
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
10 tips on saving energy from Energysage

Literature
Consumer Guide to Home Energy Savings - 10th Edition: Save Money, Save the Earth, Jennifer Thorne Amann, Alex Wilson and Katie Ackerly
Our Renewable Future, Richard Heinberg and David Fridley
Taming the Sun, Varun Sivaram

A big city with CO₂-neutral transportation? It's becoming a reality in Rotterdam.

A big city with CO₂-neutral transportation? That may sound like science fiction, but it’s becoming a reality in Rotterdam. A trip through The Netherlands’ second largest city shows what governments, companies and residents can achieve when they work together to create green, urban logistics.

Rotterdam is home to Europe’s largest container port. Some 136,000 ships docked in the busy harbor in 2018. Traffic and congestion are also a part of everyday life, making air pollution a major cause for concern. That’s why the city of Rotterdam is working closely with local companies and residents to create innovative and green urban solutions.

In a low-emission tour of Rotterdam, we look at how logistics company DHL is working closely with Rotterdam’s city council to reduce emissions and implement sustainable green solutions. With e-transporters, e-trucks and e-bicycles, the company has already achieved emissions-free, last-mile deliveries.

Links
City Government - Rotterdam
Port of Rotterdam

Recommendations
The 500 hidden secrets of Rotterdam, Saskia Naafs

Whether in Madagascar, the Bahamas or Sweden – help is needed in many places.

How do young people in Madagascar find a foothold in the world of work? How do people in the Bahamas rebuild after disaster strikes? And how do refugees learn to adapt to living in a new land? We traveled to Madagascar and Sweden and also met two DHL employees who offer their help on the ground after natural disasters.

This episode is about the kind of heroes who don’t wear capes. Who do more than just their daily jobs. Who volunteer their time to help those in need. It's about getting involved and making the world a better place. It’s also about lemurs.

Links
Improving employability
SOS Children’s Villages and Deutsche Post DHL Group
Disaster management
The UN Refugee Agency – UNHCR

Listen to moving stories from people around the world.

Living Logistics delves deep into stories that will move and surprise you –  and introduce you to people who are doing meaningful work, stepping up sustainable living and making transport networks greener than you might expect.
 
Living Logistics is produced by the Central Editorial Team and the Digital Communications Team within the Communication, Sustainability & Brand department at Deutsche Post DHL Group in Bonn, Germany.

Jobs & Career at Deutsche Post and DHL: careers.dhl.com