One of the company's Sylvania Lighting Services fleet vehicles.
DANVERS, MA – Lighting products company Osram Sylvania has made major changes to its fleet of vehicles in the U.S. in order to meet corporate emissions reductions goals. Overall, the company has successfully reduced its corporate absolute greenhouse gas emissions by 20% since 2006. Originally, Osram Sylvania had pledged to reduce its corporate greenhouse gas emissions by 10% between 2006 and 2011.
The majority of Osram Sylvania's fleet resides within Sylvania Lighting Services (SLS), the company’s lighting services and maintenance division. Part of the company’s improvement effort involved changing its fleet composition significantly. This included replacing vehicles with larger displacement engines with smaller engines, adding clean diesel-certified vehicles to its fleet, and implementing a corporate-wide program to reduce idling and speeding.
Osram Sylvania has a total of 1,180 vehicles, according to Jennifer Dolin, manager of sustainability and environmental affairs. Out of that total, 800 are service vehicles (375 bucket trucks, 375 vans and utility vehicles, 30 box trucks, and 20 large aerial/crane trucks), and the rest consist of 80 pickup trucks in a motor pool and 300 SmartWay certified passenger vehicles for SLS and all corporate sales divisions.
Dolin explained that it replaced 75% of its full size eight-cylinder pickup trucks over the last 4 years and plans to replace the remaining 25% this year, all with smaller four-cylinder pickup trucks. The company also replaces 8 - 10% of its service fleet each year in order to cycle out older, inefficient models, replacing them with new, certified clean-idle vehicles and those that don’t need to idle when operating an aerial device. For the aerial trucks, Osram Sylvania is using a direct drive battery system, which eliminates the need for Power Take Off and any need to idle while operating the aerial device.
The company also has programs and training for its drivers that are designed to reduce emissions.
“We have a strict company vehicle speed limit policy in place and educate our drivers on regular scheduled fleet/safety meetings,” Dolin explained. “We also have an anti-idling policy in place in addition to educating our drivers on federal/state and local regulations/ordinances for vehicle idling.”
Osram Sylvania was recognized in 2011 by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Clean Fleets partnership for its efforts to reduce emissions.
