The Life Cycle Management Navigator Carbon Footprinting Training Session 10

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The Life Cycle Management NavigatorCarbon
Footprinting Training Session 10
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Carbon FootprintingCarbon Footprinting as
current Trend
What?

• Reduction of climate impact of products!
• Thats what consumers, key retailers and product
  manufacturers ask for.
• Thats what Carbon Footprinting can provide.

Source www.diy.com, www.groupe-casino.fr
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Carbon FootprintingWhat is a Carbon Footprint?
What?

• A CARBON FOOTPRINT is...
• ...the total set of greenhouse gas emissions
  caused directly and indirectly by an individual,
  event, organisation, or product expressed as CO2
  equivalents.
• It encompasses e.g.
• use of fuels
• employee travel or
• emissions from other organisations within the
  supply chain.

Source www.carbontrust.co.uk
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Carbon Footprinting Calculation
Example
Different organisations use different
calculations, e.g.
for the calculation of the CO2 impact of private
persons
for the calculation of the CO2 impact of their
cardboards
Sources www.carbonfootprint.com, www.tetrapak.com
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Carbon Footprinting Calculation
Example
No calculation standard yet!

Standard coming up in June 2008 PAS 2050

• Most commonly used
• Methodology of Carbon Trust
• Based on LC Thinking
• Converts Greenhouse Gas Emissions into CO2e
• Uses 100 year global warming potential
  recommended by IPCC

Publicly Available Specification
Source www.carbontrust.co.uk
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Carbon Footprinting Current Discussion on
Implications
Why?
Benefits
Critical notes

• Exclusion of other life cycle impacts than CO2
  e.g. water footprint
• Trade-off with social aspects, e.g. peas from
  Kenia Long Flight versus economic wealth
  creation
• Difficult to calculate complex and variable
  data, Uncertainties in measuring, e.g. methane
• Confusion of consumers in communication, no
  standard

• Helps to reduce product-related impact on
  climate change
• Reputation as competitive advantage, due to high
  awareness of climate change among consumers
• Easy communication tool between retailer and
  consumer on embodied carbon

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Carbon Footprinting Steps of Carbon Footprinting
How?

• Step 1 - Identify
• Identify all products along your supply chain
• Include raw materials, packaging, co-products,
  waste, resources used in transportation and
  storage

• Step 2 - Assess
• Discover the supply chain phases for each of
  your identified products
• Compile the different supply chains to one full
  supply chain and visualize it

Source Paulavets, Climate change and the food
industry, 2008
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Carbon Footprinting Steps to Carbon Footprinting
How?

• Step 3 - Decide
• Choose the products that make
• a significant contribution to the carbon footprint

• Step 4 - Act
• Collect CO2 data for significant products at
  every stage in the process
• Use secondary data, e.g. comparable studies,
  where primary data is not available

• Step 5 - Evaluate
• Calculate the material balance of each
• stage of the process
• Sum it up to the total carbon footprint

Source Paulavets, Climate change and the food
industry, 2008
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Carbon Footprinting Innocent drinks, UK
Example
240 employees Estimated turnover 2007 100 Mio
Pounds respectively 124 Mio
Innocent drinks is doubling its profits annually
Source www.innocentdrinks.co.uk
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Carbon Footprinting Tips for Action!
Tips

• A good tool to communicate the carbon impact of
  products to customers
• Gain competitive advantage among other suppliers
• Do not forget about other life cycle impacts when
  concentrating on carbon footprinting