Product Carbon Footprint

A corporate carbon footprint shows the total emissions arising from all of your organisation’s activities. A product carbon footprint gives, per product, the emissions that a single product generates over its life cycle. The two complement each other: the corporate inventory answers at the facility and company level, and the product calculation answers at the product level that the buyer asks for.

Because a product carbon footprint is calculated according to the product’s life cycle and production processes, separate calculations may be needed for different products or for product groups that differ significantly. For products with similar raw materials, production processes and supply chains, a suitable grouping can be made. We assess your product portfolio and data structure and determine together which products need to be calculated separately.

A cradle-to-gate calculation covers the emissions from raw material up to the moment the product leaves your production facility’s gate. Cradle-to-grave also adds the transport, use and disposal stages. Which one is needed depends on your product and your customer’s request; intermediate goods manufacturers are generally asked for cradle-to-gate.

CBAM applies a separate calculation method; embedded emissions are determined facility by facility under the rules defined by the EU. An ISO 14067 calculation does not replace this method, but production and energy data are common inputs to both studies.