Ford is making car parts with McDonalds waste
In 2018, McDonalds sold 822 million cups of coffee in the US resulting in a lot of coffee chaff, which is the husk of the bean that comes off during roasting. This is usually either turned into garden mulch and charcoal or thrown away. However instead, through a partnership with Ford, the chaff will now be used to make interior car components.
The parts can be made by heating the chaff and mixing it with plastic and other additives to form pellets and other shapes. These pieces are 20% lighter than those that are currently used and therefore better for fuel efficiency. Alongside this, they also use 25% less energy in the production process. The first component that will be made using chaff is headlamp housing, of which production will begin by the end of the year.
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Amazon tests a new service
With the holiday season well under way, the pressure is on for companies’ delivery networks to ensure that orders arrive with the customer on time. In order to achieve this, Amazon is fine-tuning its delivery network by testing a new service called Amazon Storage and Replenishment.
Amazon Storage and Replenishment is designed to ensure the company meets its next-day shipping pledge without overcrowding its warehouses or running out of products. It aims to achieve this by allowing merchants to store inventory close to Amazon’s delivery operations in order to speed up the stock replenishment process. The service is currently being trialed in Ontario, California, with plans – if successful – to roll out the program to other locations across the country.
According to Juozas Kaziukenas, founder of New York e-commerce research firm Market Pulse, Amazon is using this service “to figure out how to provide a logistics service merchants will pay for and not end up with warehouses full of items no-one is buying.”
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DHL to bring electric delivery vans to the U.S.
DHL will debut StreetScooter’s zero-emission Work L delivery van in two U.S. cities in Spring 2020. While the exact location of in which cities they will be debuted has not been revealed, the company has said one will be on the east coast and the other on the west coast. It is predicted that full roll out will come in 2022 and 2023 according to Ulrich Stuhec, StreetScooter’s chief technology officer.
The introduction into the U.S market comes as companies try to reduce their Greenhouse gas emissions amid climate change. In 2010, the transportation industry accounted for 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions according to UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. As a result, many companies have set out to reduce emissions and cities are trying to establish zero-emission zones.
DHL has, over the last three years, been establishing a “CO2-free last mile delivery” across German cities including Berlin, Munich and Hamburg and roughly uses 10,000 StreetScooter electric vehicles across Europe. It is expected that more deliveries are to be carried out by electric vehicles as Amazon, UPS and FedEx have all added these to their fleets.
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Have a great weekend!