Product carbon footprints: when a customer needs one

What is a product carbon footprint?

The greenhouse gas emissions of one product, from the raw materials through your processes to the point it leaves your gate (cradle-to-gate), or through its use and disposal (cradle-to-grave), expressed as kilograms of CO2e per unit. A company footprint says what your whole business emits in a year; a product carbon footprint (PCF) says what one of your products carries. Both are calculated against standards: for products, the GHG Protocol Product Standard and ISO 14067, and for exchanging them between companies, the PACT Methodology (formerly the Pathfinder Framework).

Why is my customer asking for one?

Because your product goes into theirs, and they want the figure for the thing they actually buy rather than a share of your company total. A customer that buys one component from you cannot tell from your company footprint how much of it belongs to that component. A PCF answers that directly, and it is the number they need for their own product footprints, for customers of their own, and for choosing between two suppliers of the same part. Sectors where this is now common include pharmaceuticals and medical devices, automotive, electronics, food and drink, construction products and packaging.

Do I have to provide one?

Not before company-level data, and most customers agree. The order customers follow is company figures, a target, action, then product data. If a PCF request arrives before you have a company footprint, reply that company figures come first and give a date for the PCF. If it arrives after, the material work from the Reduce stage is most of the input. What customers find difficult is a supplier of physical goods that has company figures, a target and action, and no plan for product data at all.

Your customer will accept: a date for your first PCF, a statement of which products you would footprint first (usually the ones they buy most of), and an interim figure where you have one, labelled as an estimate.

Which products should I footprint first?

The ones the asking customer buys most of, by volume or spend, and the ones that represent a family. One footprint for a representative product can often be scaled to its variants with a clear note on what differs. A supplier with two hundred SKUs does not need two hundred footprints; it needs a few, done properly, with a stated method for the rest.

What will the customer do with it?

Match it to the lines in their purchasing where they buy that product and replace the company-level or industry-average figure on those lines with your product figure. Some customers do this automatically from the product name or code. They will also check it: a PCF arrives with a standard, a boundary, a data quality indication and, ideally, a third-party check, and customers increasingly run it through an evaluator before using it. The free PCF Evaluator does this for any footprint or environmental product declaration (EPD), so you can run yours through it before the customer does.

What does it cost?

More than a company footprint. A first PCF for one product typically takes weeks rather than an afternoon, needs product and process data (bill of materials, energy per unit, material factors from your suppliers), and most suppliers get help the first time. After the first one, the method is reusable and the next products are faster. Free public guidance helps with the first: Japan's Ministry of the Environment publishes an introductory guide to product carbon footprints in Japanese, and Thailand's TGO explains its national product carbon footprint and carbon label scheme in Thai (the information is free; certification is paid). Grants and customer programmes sometimes fund it; the paying-for-it guide covers where to look.

What is the difference between a PCF and an EPD?

An environmental product declaration is a verified document covering several environmental impacts (carbon among them) to a product category rule, common in construction products. A PCF covers carbon only. If you already have an EPD, it contains a PCF, and customers accept it.

Do this week: if a customer has asked for a PCF, reply with the date and the product you would start with. If none has, list your three most-bought products by customer, because that is your eventual starting point.

What should I do next?

Producing a product carbon footprint you can stand behind covers the method, the data and the check. If your customer uses DitchCarbon, claim your profile, where product footprints are listed against your company and matched to what each customer buys.