PIONEERING SUSTAINABILITY WITH WASTE MANAGEMENT NZ
WORDS BY JITESH SINGH
Climate change and waste minimisation are two massive global issues that Waste Management NZ Limited is facing head on . The company invests in low-carbon technologies to enable better reuse and recycling , captures over 95 % of greenhouse gases at its landfills and converts it to electricity , and is leading the way in converting its diesel fleet to electric .
Waste Management won the Fleet Environment Award at the recent 2023 Australasian Fleet Management Association Awards , and Head of Fleet Jitesh Singh was named Fleet Manager of the Year . Jitesh shares a little about the innovations he and his team are pioneering .
Sustainability is a key reason customers choose Waste Management to take care of their waste , knowing that the waste and recycling will be processed in a way that protects the environment . For this reason , the company is always looking to do better , and back in 2015 an operational carbon emissions report pointed to our diesel collections fleet producing approximately 75 % of our total carbon emissions .
Armed with this data , converting our fleet of over 800 trucks to electric became a priority .
In 2015 we started with passenger vehicles . We have nearly every make of electric vehicle available in New Zealand in our passenger fleet , but the main goal was electric trucks .
Although we were committed to an electric truck programme , we couldn ’ t buy suitable electric trucks in New Zealand , so in 2016 after a global search we discovered a company in the Netherlands , EMOSS , who at the time had a mature product that suited our requirements . That same year we sent three trucks to EMOSS for conversion . Conversions started with an electric box body truck , which was a first for the Southern Hemisphere followed by , two side load collection trucks put to work in Christchurch and Auckland .
In March 2018 we opened our Electric Vehicle Innovation Hub in Auckland , which was New Zealand ’ s first truck conversion workshop . EMOSS now provides us with kit sets and provide support to our EV engineers . We have built up a team of engineers now who not only convert trucks to EV but also provide maintenance and repair services to all WM branches operating EV trucks .
From data we ’ ve collected across our fleet , one electric truck saves about 125 litres of diesel per
6 ISSUE 41 JULY 2023 / WWW . AFMA . ORG . AU