Royal Mail is among organisations calling for the introduction of measures to tackle levels of commercial and environmental waste by using sectoral targets.

The plea is included in a new report from the Designing Out Waste consortium, which is made up of ten leading businesses including Royal Mail, Asda, Boots, Unilever and GlaxoSmithKline.

Royal Mail has played a key role in providing expertise relating to the post and product delivery aspect of the commercial supply chain, with the consortium underlining the need for a "joined-up" and effective set of policies to tackle environmental issues.

In particular, the report points out that there is a lack of any "practical means" of measuring a product's environmental performance other than energy consumption.

Highlighting the importance of the report for the postal sector, Royal Mail head of environmental solutions Matthew Neilson said: "Designing out Waste has been an important step towards mapping the legislative drivers and future actions required to create products and services that are acceptable to a society that strives for a sustainable world."

Last week, Royal Mail announced that it had developed on online solution to help businesses to refine their door to door unaddressed marketing campaigns.

Customer Finder enables firms to build maps and reports to help them target their target audience more easily and efficiently - potentially reducing waste and saving money in the process.