Customers, investors, even employees, are asking for the carbon footprint of products, and companies are making innovative claims like “carbon neutral” and “reduced carbon footprint”. Regulatory agencies in the USA and Europe are even imposing requirements based on product carbon footprints.

But what is a Product Carbon Footprint, and what is it used for?

Product Carbon Footprints include GHG Emissions from the Whole Life Cycle

Widget A from your company is manufactured in a single factory. You can calculate the factory’s GHG emissions from its energy and electricity use, which, if you were calculating a Corporate GHG Inventory, would be like calculating the Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions for the product.

But calculate a Product Carbon Footprint, you must also include the GHG emissions associated with the materials used to make the product, as well as its use and disposal. These GHG emissions go by many names, including:

Embedded GHG Emissions (or Embedded Carbon).
“Upstream” (or “Downstream”) GHG Emissions.
Life Cycle GHG Emissions.
Cradle-to-grave GHG emissions.

Because Product Carbon Footprints consider the entire life cycle of a product, they are calculated using a technique called Life Cycle Assessment, usually referred to by its acronym “LCA”. As its name implies, LCAs assess the emissions across the whole life cycle of a product.

Let’s look at a tangible example of using LCA to create the Product Carbon Footprint of a coffee mug.

The Product Carbon Footprint of a Coffee Mug

Let’s consider the life cycle of a coffee mug, which includes the following stages.

Raw Material Extraction, including the quarrying of the clay used in the ceramic, and extraction of the materials used in the paint and glazing.
Raw material processing, mixing the raw clay with water and other materials to make it into a moldable material that can be shaped into a coffee mug.
Firing and shaping the finished clay into a mug shape via molding or extrusion.
Packaging and shipping the mug to the end customer.
Use by the end customer, which, considering only the coffee mug, includes washing and drying.
End of life, disposing of the coffee mug once it’s broken or otherwise goes out of use.

The Product Carbon Footprint includes the GHG emissions associated with every step of this entire life cycle. In the world of Corporate GHG inventories, this is like including the Scope 3 GHG emissions of your company.

Product Carbon Footprints Calculate the GHG Emissions Relative to the Product Itself

While corporate GHG inventories are reported in absolute numbers, like “tons of Carbon Dioxide Equivalent” (or CO2e), Product Carbon Footprints are reported relative to an amount of product. In the example of the coffee mug, this would mean the Product Carbon Footprint would be reported in kilograms of Carbon Dioxide Equivalent per mug, e.g. 1.2 kg CO2e per coffee mug. Here are some other products and how their carbon footprint might be reported:

kg CO2e per 96” wooden stud
kg CO2e per gallon of milk
kg CO2e per 1 square meter of copy paper

The unit of product that a Product Carbon Footprint is quantified against is called its functional unit. This “relative nature” of a Product Carbon Footprint differentiates it from a Corporate GHG Inventory, even one that includes Scope 3 GHG emissions.

For more complex life cycles, which use energy or other resources, a more complicated expression of the Product Carbon Footprint may be required. For example, an electrical space heater requires GHG emissions to manufacture, but also to power. In this case, a more appropriate Product Carbon Footprint may be expressed as kg CO2e per 1,000 Wh of heating, taking into account both the production and use of the heater. In this case, the functional unit for the space heater is 1,000 Wh of heating.

The Key Standards: ISO 14040, 14044, and 14067

There is a great deal of complexity and nuance involved in the LCAs used to calculate Product Carbon Footprints. Fortunately, “rules of the road” for calculating Product Carbon Footprints have been developed in the form of ISO standards:

ISO 14040 (Environmental Management - Life Cycle Assessment - Principles and Framework, 2006) & 14044 (Environmental Management - Life Cycle Assessment - Requirements and Guidelines, 2006) provide detailed methodological requirements on LCAs, such as data and modeling requirements.
ISO 14067 (Greenhouse Gases - Carbon footprint of products - Requirements and Guidelines for Quantification, 2018) provides methodology requirements comparable to ISO 14044, but with an explicit focus on GHG emissions. (ISO 14044 is actually a normative reference to ISO 14067, which means that any Product Carbon Footprint complying with ISO 14067 must also comply with ISO 14044.)

Other standards governing the practice of Product Cabron Footprints exist, as well, like the WRI GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard. However, essentially all LCAs today comply with ISO 14044, and most Product Carbon Footprints comply with ISO 14067.

What are Product Carbon Footprints used for?

There are several ways Product Carbon Footprints can be used:

Creating marketing claims. For example, if your facility utilizes an innovative manufacturing process or material which has reduced your product’s GHG emissions, you can make claims based on that. Product Carbon Footprints also underpin any Carbon Neutral claims.
Satisfying customer requests. Evaluating a Product Carbon Footprint can help distinguish your product to customers. For example, by evaluating a Product Carbon Footprint and going Carbon Neutral, your product can become listed as a Climate Pledge Friendly product on Amazon.
Meeting regulatory requirements. The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism now mandates the Product Carbon Footprint of products being imported into the EU. And in California, regulations like the Buy Clean California Act and Title 24, Part 11, of the 2022 California Green Building Standards Code could mandate, or heavily prefer, that you publish a Product Carbon Footprint and meet certain requirements for emissions.

Need help in evaluating a Product Carbon Footprint?

You can read our series of blog posts to learn more about Product Carbon Footprints, Life Cycle Assessments, what is required to create them. Or you can contact us directly if you need support, at info@novacreatio-sustainability.com or visit our Contact Us page.

Product Carbon Footprint 101