Unpacking Product Carbon Footprint: what to know if you’re getting started

If you're just beginning to explore the concept of Product Carbon Footprints (PCF), understanding the basics is crucial for integrating this practice into your business's sustainability strategy. This blog unpacks the essentials of PCF, covering what it is, when it's relevant to calculate PCF, what to consider before starting your calculations, and how to use the resulting data to drive sustainability development. Whether you're looking to enhance your environmental efforts or gain a deeper understanding of your product impacts, this post will provide the foundational knowledge you need to get started.

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What is PCF?

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A Product Carbon Footprint measures the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions generated throughout a product's lifecycle. 

It can include upstream and downstream emissions. Upstream emissions refer to activities such as the extraction of raw materials, transportation to the production site, processing required before manufacturing, or emissions from the actual product manufacturing process when manufacturing is outsourced. On the other hand, downstream emissions are related to the distribution, consumer use, and disposal of the product. 

By quantifying these emissions, companies can identify major sources of emissions and use data to inform their sustainability actions.

PCF is also sometimes referred to "Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).” While PCF and LCA overlap, the latter takes a broader approach that assesses a wide range of environmental impacts beyond just greenhouse gas emissions. PCF focuses specifically on carbon emissions, making it a subset of the more comprehensive LCA.

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When should you consider calculating a PCF?

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For companies in production industries like manufacturing and retail, PCF emissions can constitute a significant portion of their overall emission footprint across the three scopes. If you want to build accurate an carbon footprint assessments, having a clear overview of the emissions associated with your products will be essential. Additionally, as we'll see, there can be other drivers for PCF calculation. 

In some contexts, calculating a PCF might be essential to meet regulatory requirements. Governments and regulatory bodies are increasingly placing stricter regulations on companies’ carbon emissions. For example, in Europe, the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation aims to reduce environmental impact by setting design requirements for products to improve their energy efficiency, durability, and recyclability. The ESPR already requires companies to disclose Digital Product Passports for certain product groups to provide detailed information on a product’s environmental impact. This reinforces the need for accurate and comprehensive PCF assessments.

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Calculating Product Carbon Footprints also allows companies to reach corporate sustainability goals. Many companies have set ambitious sustainability targets, such as achieving net-zero emissions. Product carbon footprints provide a clear roadmap to track progress and make informed decisions to meet these goals, demonstrating corporate responsibility to stakeholders.

As sustainability is an increasingly important value for consumers and enterprises, you can consider calculating PCF to improve your brand reputation. Consumers today are more conscious of sustainability. Demonstrating a commitment to sustainability through transparent carbon footprint reporting can significantly enhance your brand's reputation among customers and improve opportunities for new investments and business growth. In the retail sector, for instance, brands like Patagonia and Mammut have built strong reputations by highlighting their efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

Understanding your product’s carbon footprint can uncover inefficiencies in your supply chain and production processes and drive cost savings. For example, a manufacturing company might discover that long transport distances for raw materials are a major source of emissions and costs. By switching to local suppliers, they can reduce both emissions and expenses.

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How to use PCF data to drive sustainability development

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By integrating PCF data into your business strategy, you can comply with regulations, save costs, enhance your company’s reputation, and drive innovation, contributing to a healthier planet and positioning your company for long-term success.  

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Set reduction targets

Use the carbon footprint data to set realistic and measurable emission reduction targets for your products. These targets should align with your overall sustainability strategy and be integrated into your business planning. This could mean reducing the emissions of a certain product or product group or the emissions from sourced materials by a certain percentage by 2030. As many companies’ emissions are driven by the products and materials they procure, changes in product design and composition are a strong driver of decarbonization.

For example, IKEA, which committed to halving its emissions by 2030, uses PCF data to set precise targets for reducing emissions across its product lines, including a 70% reduction in emissions from product use at home and a 30% reduction in emissions from product end-of-life compared to its 2016 baseline.  

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Optimize your supply chain

Work with suppliers to improve the sustainability of raw materials and transportation. Consider local sourcing to reduce transportation emissions and engage with suppliers who share your commitment to sustainability. This way, you can leverage many companies’ experience to find better raw materials or transport modes to use for your products.

For example, LEGO, whose supply chain activities account for 99% of its total emissions, collaborates closely with its suppliers to enhance the sustainability of its products. In a recent Net-Zero Supplier Initiative, LEGO encourages suppliers to significantly enhance the sustainability of raw materials and transportation methods. The program not only demands specific emission reduction targets but also fosters collaboration on efficient resource use and the shift to renewable energy sources. This approach helps LEGO optimize its supply chain by engaging suppliers who are equally committed to sustainability, ensuring that every component of the product journey contributes to a lower overall PCF.

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Innovate on product design

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PCF data can be a powerful tool in driving product innovation and sustainability simultaneously. By redesigning products to be more energy-efficient, utilize fewer or recycled resources, and have longer lifespans, companies can significantly reduce their environmental impact. 

For example, Mammut has adopted solution dyeing for some of its synthetic fabrics. This technique, unlike traditional piece dyeing, significantly reduces water, chemical usage, and CO2 emissions. Solution dyeing involves dyeing polyester or polyamide granules before they are extruded into yarn, making the color an intrinsic part of the fabric. This enhances color durability and minimizes environmental impact, reducing water consumption by up to 85%, chemical use by up to 90%, and CO2 emissions by up to 12%. Despite higher minimum order quantities and longer production lead times, Mammut is expanding this innovative process to more products, demonstrating its commitment to sustainability and product longevity.

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What to consider before calculating your Product Carbon Footprint  

Choose the product(s) you want to assess

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Choosing the product(s) for a carbon footprint assessment ultimately depends on your sustainability goals, available data, and resources. Here are some recommendations:

1) Start by focusing on key products

• Products generating most of your revenue.
• Products you manufacture the most.
• Products with readily available data.

2) Leverage Corporate Carbon Footprint data

• Select products with the highest impact on your overall emissions.

3) Keep your business goals in mind

• Which products are sold to your most important customers? If important customers request carbon footprint data for their own calculations, prioritize these products. Providing carbon footprint data for products you sell can offer a significant competitive advantage and improve customer relations, especially if your customers have set climate targets of their own.

• Where can you have the most impact to reduce emissions? If you want to create more sustainable products, the first goal is to measure which actions can create the most impact to reduce emissions. You might have already identified that some products could be manufactured by using recycled or locally procured materials, or manufactured using materials with a lower carbon intensity. Some products could be recycled at the end of their life cycle. In these cases, focusing on such products is often the best course of action.

If you produce similar products with minor differences in composition or production processes, there's the option to calculate:

• an average product carbon footprint using data of many products within a group, 
• or a representative footprint for one product seen as the best representation of the group. 

When using averages, weigh all data based on production quantities. For a representative product, it's often recommended to choose the assumed "worst-case product" generating the highest emissions among the group.

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Choose the right scope

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A scope defines the limits of your carbon footprint, aiming to specify exactly what is being measured. This includes selecting the product, its measurement unit, and the greenhouse gasses to be studied. Most standards require the inclusion of greenhouse gasses CO2, CH4, N2O, SF6, PFCs, and HFCs. In Cozero, all results are calculated in carbon dioxide equivalents, measuring the impact of all greenhouse gasses. This simplifies the comparison and aggregation of the different greenhouse gasses by converting their varying impacts on global warming into a single, standardized unit.  

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Choose the right boundaries

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A boundary refers to the parts of a product's lifecycle you will include and which activities will fall within them for the carbon footprint assessment. Establishing a relevant boundary will allow consistent comparability for year-on-year accounting. To determine your boundary, define why you are conducting the carbon footprint assessment:

Scenario 1: You want to reduce production emissions, or your customers are requesting you to provide PCF data.

In this case, you would most likely want to look at the impacts of raw materials and the emissions from your own production processes. A cradle-to-gate boundary, which covers raw material acquisition, production, and packaging, might be the most sensible choice. This is also the most commonly requested type of product carbon footprint for your customers who want to use this data to inform their own emissions calculations for the products they purchase.

Scenario 2: You want to reduce emissions throughout a product’s lifetime or inform your customers about the emissions created by the product's use.

To decide, ask yourself: Does your product require energy to be used by consumers, either directly, like vehicles or machinery, or indirectly, like clothes that require washing during use? This often means that the use by consumers creates an important source of emissions for the product. To lower these emissions, you could find ways to improve the product’s energy efficiency, use materials that require less washing, or educate your customers on the most climate-friendly way to use your products. 

Additionally, you might want to explore the impacts of material disposal once the product is disposed of. This allows you to consider choices of used materials to increase the product’s recyclability and inform your customers on the best ways to dispose of the product.

Before taking action, it’s important to assess the impact you can create. Therefore, accounting for the full life cycle of the product with a cradle-to-grave or cradle-to-cradle approach is the best way to identify which emissions hotspots you should address.

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Scenario 3: You want to compare the climate performance of different products.

Using product carbon footprint data for product comparisons adds a layer of complexity to the analysis. Instead of the scope and boundary of one product, you need to make sure the scope and boundary are equal and comparable for both. This typically means the products need to fulfill the same function and include all the same types of emission-generating activities.  For product comparisons, a full cradle-to-grave or -cradle assessment will give the most complete and accurate overview of the products' impacts throughout their lifetimes.

We recommend that every product's carbon footprint cover at least the cradle-to-gate boundary. However, if your product continues to use energy for consumer use, needs long-distance transportation, or contains hard-to-recycle materials, downstream impacts should also be considered.

Using a Product Carbon Footprint software

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Once you have a clear understanding of product choice and boundary scoping, the question of the tool might arise.

Measuring product emissions can involve barriers like limited data available along the entire value chain and evolving methodologies. A PCF solution can support supplier engagement for data collection and provide industry product emission benchmarks to overcome the challenges of PCF measurement.

In our carbon management platform, the Product Carbon Footprint module offers businesses a practical way to analyze the carbon emissions of their products or product lines throughout their entire lifecycle. This module enhances carbon transparency at each step of the product journey by digitizing product data, automating emissions calculations, connecting with supplier networks, and providing detailed reporting and analysis. By leveraging these tools, companies can better understand and manage their environmental impact, supporting their ongoing sustainability efforts.

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