The GHG Protocol requires businesses to include emissions from purchased goods and services (Category 1 of Scope 3).
This module offers significant time savings by automating the categorization of purchase and material inventory items. With increased accuracy powered by machine learning, you can now categorize autonomously and consistently, while the simplified workflow makes assigning emission factors seamless and accessible.
1. Why Consider Emissions from Products and Raw materials inventory?
Emissions from raw materials often represent a significant portion of a product's lifecycle impact. Ignoring these emissions would underestimate the environmental footprint. Furthermore, products themselves may also have embedded emissions from their production, transport, and handling.
By considering emissions from products and raw materials inventory, businesses can better understand, reduce, and communicate their environmental impact, staying competitive in a carbon-conscious market.
This data collection template is divided into two main tabs:
Manufactured products tab: finished and processed products that are the combination of one or more raw materials (clothing, pens, etc.),
Raw materials tab: raw materials (steel bars, wood planks, etc.).
Why this distinction?
The emission factors used in this module are based on recognized databases (EcoInvent, ADEME, etc.) and emission calculations differ according to the emission factors available:
If the product purchased is a manufactured product, the calculation is carried out by multiplying the quantity of products by this emission factor.
If the product purchased is a raw material, the calculation is carried out the same way, but the value of the emission factor is increased by 20% to take into account the transformation of the raw material into the finished product (the median value of 20% is obtained from several thousand product life-cycle analyses).
2. Upload your data
You have two options to upload your data:
Manually, on the platform by clicking on "Add data manually"
Using the template by clicking on "Import file". The template is downloaded in the same language as the platform. When using it, we ask you to fill the English one with English data and the French one with French data. You can always download the other language on the READ ME page of the template:
Whichever you use, please make sure to fill out the mandatory fields: they come with a red * on the platform and appear in green in the template.
The mandatory fields are:
Internal ID: the identifier you use internally for this purchase
Main Material: this data must be clear, understandable, and well-written. It must characterize the physical material or main material that composes the product.
For manufactured products: Quantity, Weight, and Unit: If you only have the total weight, then simply set the quantity to 1.
For raw materials: Weight and Unit
Supplier: Mandatory for SBTi clients and optional for others. However, we strongly encourage you to search for this information, as it will be used to reduce your Scope 3 emissions.
There are also additional data that would help us provide even more accurate results and we highly recommend including them:
Product / Raw Material family: used for visualization purposes, write whatever you want to be used for visualization on the platform.
Country of purchase/manufacture: the country where the raw material was bought, or where the product was manufactured.
Purchase date: the date of the purchase is important to be sure that the buying outside the reporting year is not taken into account. This info is also used for specific reporting periods (monthly, quarterly, etc).
Price and Currency: to neutralize the correct financial emission to avoid double counting of emissions in the final report.
Description: if you wish to provide us with details that may help us to understand your data.
"Cross entities", "Entities" and "Business unit": If you are part of a multi-entity company on Greenly, you can use these optional tags to help you visualize and understand your results better.
If you do not have the necessary information, you can click on "Skip the module" at the bottom left of the page.
3. Categorization
This page offers an automated system for categorizing your product purchase inventory. It simplifies the process of assigning emission factors, ensuring accuracy and validity, so you can categorize your products more precisely and select the most appropriate emission factor for each item. This page is divided into 3 tabs: Review, Custom Categorization, and Overview.
The algorithm will suggest emission factors for most of your products. You will have to either validate or reject the suggestion in the "Categorization > 1. Review" tab. To be able to access to the next step, you need to achieve at least 80% in the categorization score.
For the items without emission factor suggestions, you will be able to search for them in the "Categorization > 2. Custom Categorization" tab.
Flag as missing category: If you cannot find your emission category, you will be able to flag it as missing and a pop-up will ask you to explain why the category is missing (you need to provide information to find the best emission factor for your product). A climate expert will review your request and associate the missing emission factor to your flagged products.
The list of your products and material will appear in the "Categorization - 3. Overview" . You can still change your data by selecting it and clicking on "Edit" or "Delete".
4. Review your data and read your results
Once you have uploaded your data and categorized your items, you can flag the expenses related to the module to avoid double counting and access your results. To do so, please read the related article.