NEWSROOM

Zer, the Koç Group's company serving in the field of procurement and supply chain management, with its project named "Sensitive Travel" carried out with personnel transportation suppliers, facilitated the donation of more than 164,000 saplings to the TEMA Foundation and took action to support the employment of female drivers.

TURKEY - The "Sensitive Travel" project initiated by Zer, the procurement and supply chain management company of the Koç Group, together with its suppliers, supports tree planting to combat carbon emissions resulting from personnel transportation services and aims to change gender-biased understanding related to professions by encouraging the employment of female drivers in personnel services.

Since 2020, over 164,000 saplings have been donated to the TEMA Foundation by Zer and Zer's personnel transportation suppliers. In another part of the same project, Zer aimed to break down prejudices related to job choices by adding a clause to the contracts it made with personnel transportation suppliers to employ female drivers.

“We produce projects that focus on the environment and our community in the areas where we provide procurement services”

According to the latest reports published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change affiliated with the United Nations, carbon emissions take the first place among the causes of the climate crisis. The International Energy Agency emphasizes that a 20% reduction in carbon emissions in the transportation sector needs to occur by 2030 in order to reach the net-zero emission target by 2050. Reports by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) show that women constitute only 17% of the total workforce in the transportation industry in 46 countries.

Serhan Turfan, the General Manager of Zer, reminding that titles such as sustainability, diversity, equality, and inclusivity are on the agenda of companies and senior executives from all over the world, said, "As Zer, we also consider conveying the understanding of sustainability to all our business processes and stakeholders among our duties". Stating that they prioritize providing solutions that improve multiple problems in the areas where Zer conducts procurement activities, Turfan stated that the Sensitive Travel project also operates in a model that meets this priority.

“We travel 70 million kilometres per year"

Turfan gave the following information about the project and its achievements: "Our employees designed Responsive Travel as part of our 'Most Successful Zerliler' competition, which we organized to encourage and reward the practices that will help Zer achieve its vision and goals. The climate crisis is our priority agenda as well as the rest of the world. When we determined that 8.3 million trips and 70 million kilometers are covered annually with 4,200 vehicles in approximately 280 locations with our personnel transportation supply service, we believed that what we can do against the carbon emissions caused by this activity will have transformative effects for our world. We have taken into account the importance of the sapling's reduction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the oxygen function it will produce in the present and in the future. Since 2020, we have ensured that our personnel transportation suppliers donate two saplings per year to the TEMA Foundation for each person their transportation has undertaken throughout the contract. Our suppliers donated nearly 140,000 saplings. As Zer, we donated 19 thousand saplings to support the 'Zer and its Solution Partners Forests’."

Zer wants to break down the prejudices about career choices

Stating that they believe they will achieve the highest benefit in environmental and social areas with the projects to be carried out together with the stakeholders in Zer's ecosystem, Serhan Turfan said, “The transportation sector is one of the sectors that most need improvement in terms of gender inequality. Within the scope of the project, we added a clause regarding female driver employment to the contracts we made with our personnel transportation suppliers in order to break down the prejudices regarding occupational preferences. We not only enabled our suppliers to support the fight against gender inequality, but also developed a solution that provides equal opportunity for employment gaps in the transportation sector."