Carbon Footprinting

Carbon is the new currency.

Manufacturers and suppliers are being asked to undertake carbon footprint assessments of their operations. This can be due to retailers requiring suppliers to provide a footprint of their products, targets within the company’s environmental management systems, or commitments made under the Business in the Community’s May Day agreements.

With businesses rushing to carbon footprint their operations it is easy to forget that the vast majority of a company’s carbon footprint is down to embedded impact or the use phase of the products and packaging that they produce. This impact is determined by the design of the product and packaging. It can account for over 95% of a company’s impact yet traditional carbon footprinting tends to focus on site-based impacts.

eco³ deliver site based carbon assessments but specialise in product and packaging based measures that then feedback to inform the design process. This approach provides a quantum leap in carbon reduction rather than incremental reduction. Effective design is the key to reducing carbon impact. For example one of our client’s was surprised to learn that 17% of their overall footprint was due to their packaging. We showed another that over 97% of their impact was due to the use of the product and that a simple design change could massively reduce this.

Working with 10 food producers in the South West of England we have identified changes in packaging design that reduced the carbon impact of that packaging by 18,000 tonnes CO2 per year and could reduce costs by £1.5 million per year. Our eco-design consultancy tends to save our customers over 25 times its cost.

For a true assessment of you company’s carbon impact. Give us a call.