Footlongs' Footprint

Can squeezing more pickles into a pouch make that $5 Footlong easier to swallow? SUBWAY thinks so.

Guided by its “Eat Fresh” motto, SUBWAY is intent on nurturing a “green” logistics strategy by reducing the carbon footprint of its massive supply chain while reducing costs at the same time.

The chain — which has more than 31,000 locations in 90 countries — has gone green in a big way. Since formalizing sustainability principles in 2006, SUBWAY has reduced corporate-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 120,000 metric tons, eliminated 9.3 million truck miles driven (saving 1.6 million gallons of diesel fuel) and cut stores’ water consumption by 41 million gallons. These improvements have been achieved even as the chain has grown 12 percent over the past three years.

Packing more pickles in a pouch offers a symbolic bottom-line example of how SUBWAY is scrutinizing every aspect of its supply chain, but it’s doing much the same with its systems for procuring produce and paper products, as well as for providing energy and water to its stores.

“You want to efficiently move your product with the least amount of miles traveled, which helps you with your fuel savings,” says Tina Fitzgerald, director of produce and social accountability for Independent Purchasing Cooperative, SUBWAY’s franchisee-owned and operated buying cooperative.

“We shoved more pickles in a pouch, and we were able to reduce the amount of truckloads because we put more cases on the truck. That helps you take trucks off the road. These are just simple things you can do to make a difference.”

SUBWAY’s sustainability effort, a plank in the chain’s 2010 strategic plan, is focused on four primary areas: energy efficiency, resource conservation, waste reduction and food safety. Efficiency and conservation take on many forms within the supply chain, with new logistics and transportation strategies providing the underpinnings for change.

The company is creating a broader, more localized supply chain as one way to create efficiencies and preserve resources, Fitzgerald says. SUBWAY has persuaded key suppliers to relocate production facilities as a way of reducing shipping costs on large product lines.

In one instance, the company realigned its salad packaging operation by persuading the packaging supplier to move 1,000 miles closer to a dry redistribution center – realizing savings of more than one million miles and reducing carbon output by 1,663 metric tons.

Internally, the company has remade its own distribution network, closing some facilities and opening new ones (among questions the company had to answer was how many stores should be supported by a distribution center). In April, SUBWAY opened a new dry redistribution center in Indianapolis and projected the facility would save 597,000 truck miles annually.

SUBWAY’s ultimate goal is to reduce its overall carbon emissions by 25 percent, and Fitzgerald says the key to meeting that objective is supply chain localization. “We are traveling fewer miles so we are saving in diesel fuel, and we’re emitting less carbon and our supply chain is more efficient.”

Before formally embarking on its green journey, SUBWAY began working with Atlanta-based supply chain vendor Chainalytics to understand the impact of its carbon emissions and determine the “relevant scope of control” in its supply chain by surveying where – and how — the company was leaving its carbon footprint.