Feb 9, 2021| ESG

JD Voluntarily Transports COVID-19 Vaccine

Yuchuan Wang

by Yuchuan Wang

On Feb. 9, JD Logistics, JD.com’s logistics arm, began the voluntary transportation of China’s COVID-19 vaccine in Yizhuang, the Economic-Technological Development Area in the south of Beijing. JD will handle the last-mile delivery of the vaccine from a government-designated transfer warehouse to the vaccination points in the area.

JD’s cold chain logistics system ensures the whole procedure of distribution is traceable and controllable. All vaccines are transported between 2 to 8 degrees Celsius. The company’s cold chain monitoring platform will monitor and record real-time location and refrigerator temperature and report abnormal situations immediately.

JD has several ongoing projects concerning the COVID-19 vaccine transportation, and is expected to transport the vaccine in more regions after the Chinese New Year holiday. In January, JD added a dedicated pharmaceuticals warehouse in Shenyang, Liaoning province to its over 800 warehouse network nationwide. The company is also building cold chain sorting centers for pharmaceutical products in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Wuhan, Xi’an and Shenyang.

“JD is among the first of third party companies to develop pharmaceutical logistics, and has been committed to building its integrated pharmaceutical cold chain services,” said a JD Logistics representative. “In the future, JD Logistics will further leverage its advantages in logistics infrastructure, network and capacity, apply advanced technologies and continue investment in this area to drive innovation in the industry. We hope to work with up and downstream partners to build an efficient pharmaceutical cold chain system and help the industry reduce costs.”

(yuchuan.wang@jd.com)

Jul 29, 2021| ESG

JD Cloud’s Data Center Awarded as Carbon-Reduction Innovator

Vivian Yang

by Vivian Yang

JD Cloud won an innovation award for its low-carbon data center in Suqian of Jiangsu province and has been certified as an excellent carbon disclosure internet and tech company in the latest evaluation of data centers’ carbon emission performance organized by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), publicity center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the Open Data Center Committee (ODCC) on July 13^th in Beijing.

“The fast development of digital transformation in many industries has driven up energy consumption for data centers,” said Liqiang Gao, president of JD Cloud. “We have been adopting technological innovation and clean energy in operating JD’s data centers across China to go digital and green in our carbon reduction efforts.”

JD Cloud has taken measures in four main areas to cut its data center carbon emission, including improving power usage effectiveness (PUE) by adopting frequency conversion products in all water pumps and fans; careful disposal of waste water and batteries; adoption of photovoltaic and solar power in its industrial parks and self-developing high-performance liquid-cooled servers, and equipping IoT devices at scale to optimize the efficiency of the electric system and more.

In recent years JD has been committed to sustainability, as outlined in its recent ESG report published earlier this year, and as early as 2018, in its Sustainability Report 2018-2020. In October 2019, JD Logistics announced to join Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), becoming the first Chinese logistics company to join this initiative. In November 2020, it made the commitment to reduce 50% carbon emissions by 2030, a target that has been approved and listed on SBTi’s website.

(vivian.yang@jd.com)

Jul 27, 2021| ESG

UNGC Names JD.com Among Vanguards in Cutting CO2 Emissions

Siyi Zhao

by Siyi Zhao

JD.com was named as a leading example for taking proactive actions to reach net zero in a roadmap whitepaper published by UN Global Compact in Beijing on July 27.

The report, Corporate Net Zero Pathway, cited JD.com’s efforts in replacing traditional fuel-combustion trucks with new energy vehicles to meet the environmental commitment. These new energy vehicles have been adopted in more than 50 cities across China, reducing at least 120,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.

Ms. Meng Liu, Head of UNGC in Asia-Pacific Network, speaks highly about JD.com effort in the course of reducing carbon emission. “We have noticed JD’s respective endeavors almost in every fronts of its businesses with ambitious and realistic practice in this regard. That is exactly the reason we include JD’s case in our report.” JD’s efforts in this report is stated under the topics of logistics, warehouses, packaging and reducing electricity use in office buildings.

JD.com has also made efforts to strengthen the use of renewable energy in its facilities. The company built and installed a photovoltaic power generation system on the roof of its Shanghai Asia No. 1 logistics park, which has significantly reduced emissions since it entered operations in June 2018. Furthermore, JD plans to team up with global partners to create the world’s largest ecosystem of rooftop photovoltaic power generation by 2030, creating a photovoltaic power generation area of more than 200 million square meters.

In addition, the report stressed JD.com’s effort in reducing the total amount of packaging materials used and selecting recyclable raw materials in the production of packaging materials, which is one of the highest-emitting activities along the value chain.

JD used recyclable packing boxes more than 10 million times in over 30 cities by 2020, each of which can be reused more than 20 times. At the end of 2020, JD.com has accumulated 16 million uses of reusable boxes, achieving a total reduction of 180 million disposable foam boxes. By innovating in package design with thinner tape and adopting electronic express sheets, JD Logistics saves 400 million meters of tape and more than 13,000 tons of paper each year.

Instead of playing solo, JD.com has worked with partners such as P&G to ship items to customers in their original packaging, reducing the need for additional packaging material and minimizing touchpoints required to reach the customer. Through its collaboration with consumer goods companies like Coca-Cola, P&G and Unilever, JD.com has developed a used plastic recycling system in which plastic is picked up from JD consumers and then sent to respective recycling locations by JD logistics to reduce emissions caused by plastic production.

As the report pointed out, global warming has been posing a formidable challenge to the earth due to the ever-growing increase in carbon emissions driven by human activities. A JD.com spokesperson made a remarks after viewing the report. “It has become an essential obligation for everyone to take actions without hesitation. JD.com will make constant efforts to build a lower carbon and greener supply chain, making its unique contribution to achieve China’s carbon neutrality goal.”

JD Logistics, which has joined Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), has announced its goal of reducing carbon emission by 50 percent in 2030 comparing with the emission of 2019, which is significantly ahead of the timetable set by Chinese government, in which China will reach emission peak by 2030.

(zhaosiyi5@jd.com)