You might be wondering how our bottles like to travel. Well, we’ve actually been partnered with GoodShipping since 2018. Through this partnership, we’ve been able to work with container ships using 100% renewable biofuel. Yes, you read that correctly!
Our bottles end up all over the world. Everyone’s drinking tap water — great! But while container ships are way more eco-friendly per product than air freight, shipping is still far from clean. As Anniek Sluis, Growth Accelerator at GoodShipping, puts it:
‘The heavy fuel oil in the container ships is nothing short of the sludge out of the drain at oil refineries. It’s very polluting. Not only that, but there’s simply a huge amount of shipping. You might not realise it, but out of everything you buy – in the supermarket, clothing, furniture – 90% is shipped per boat’.
Time to clean the decks then! ‘That’s easier said than done’, says Anniek: ‘Sludge out of a drain is of course cheaper than a sustainable biofuel. So, it’s tricky to make headway. Even if costs weren’t a deal-breaker, some sustainable alternatives mean the engine has to be overhauled, and other alternatives aren’t suitable for longer distance’. But luckily, that’s where GoodShipping came along.
Waste to energy
GoodShipping buys advanced biofuels from GoodFuels: 100% renewable fuel that can be directly used by any container ship. No engine tweaking required. Not only that, it’s the Virgin Mary among biofuels. Unsullied! Anniek: ‘Other biofuels use the waste flow from the palm oil industry as the basis, or stimulate deforestation during the production process. GoodFuels’ biofuels are made, for example, from waste cooking oil or from Crude Tall Oil (waste flow from the paper and pulp sector). In terms of shipping that means a 100% CO2 reduction. During the fuel’s production we can’t avoid a certain degree of CO2 emission, so across the board it’s like an 85% reduction in CO2’. Great! We were convinced. Aren’t you?
As our founder, Merijn, put it: ‘Dopper wants to save the planet in all sorts of areas - that’s in our DNA. We are glad to be the frontrunner, to inspire others. We show it really can be done differently and more sustainably. In any discipline. It’s fantastic to see other sustainable initiatives pop up’.
How does sustainable shipping work?
In reality, little change: the same factory, the same carrier, the same ship. And even the same fuel. Hang on a minute? ‘As long as sustainable fuels aren’t the norm, we can’t promise that the ship with your products is running on our biofuel’, Anniek explains. ‘If we would, we’d have to criss-cross the globe with our biofuel as our customers’ goods are on ships everywhere’.
What actually happens it that, using the route and your freight volume, GoodShipping calculates how much (regular) fuel you would need for the shipment. Then, GoodShipping buys that quantity of biofuel from GoodFuels and Dopper pays a surcharge for it. A container ship in the Port of Rotterdam is refuelled with biofuel, instead of (some of) the regular fuel.
You might be wondering if this is like Carbon Offsetting? You know: CO2 emissions, plant a tree, clean karma. ‘This is different, this process actually means that you’re reducing CO2 emission’, explains Anniek. ‘Just not specifically at the ship ferrying your products’.
Becoming redundant
GoodShipping has been around for years now, but we’re proud to have been one of their launching partners. Social enterprises in particular seem very enthusiastic about this initiative. Yet, slowly but surely, they’re talking to larger corporates as well. ‘[In our first two years,] we really got a lot of attention. We held TED Talks, won an Accenture Innovation Award, and many others. We’[d] only just started, but [had] huge ambitions’.
Since, GoodShipping’s group-wide activities garnered them a Gold medal in the EcoVadis Sustainability Assessment. ‘Ultimately, our aim is to see sustainable alternatives become the norm – biofuels, hydrogen or electric powered shipping – and for us to become redundant’. Eradication. That’s a dream for Merijn too. That we’ve drunk all oceans clean, and that single-use plastic water bottles are no longer on sale in the supermarkets. Or as he himself puts it: ‘Until such a time, we'll do all we can to make an impact. To that end we’re keen to work together on initiatives such as GoodShipping’.