Testimonials

'It's really useful because we can look at the information from all different angles and it's so easy to use,' says Ms Hamilton. 'It will help us rationalise and standardise our suppliers and products, which in turn means we can get better prices.'

Vicki Hamilton, The Head of Procurement and Supplies for the Outer South East London Shared Procurement
London Procurement Program

Latest News

  • 05/07/2010
    GreenInsight launch at Business biodiversity symposium
    @UK PLC are launching GreenInsight at the ‘Global Business of Biodiversity Symposium’, partnered by DEFRA and Department for Business Innovations and Skills on the 13th of July, will see the launch of the highly anticipated ‘The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity’ (TEEB) report.

Carbon

e2class holds a number of levels of product carbon footprint data.

  • level 0 simple estimate of product carbon footprint
  • level 1 best estimate of product carbon footprint
  • level 2 built up from bill of materials, overheads and level 1 carbon footprints as inputs
  • level 3 built up from bill of materials, overheads and level 2 carbon footprints as inputs.
Level 2 or level 3 calculations can be certified to PAS 2050 or ISO 14067, once it is available.

Methods for calculating product carbon footprints

There are two established methods for calculating product carbon footprints.  One method is to use product level input output models and combine this with an organisation input output model to calculate overheads.

The other method is process based and to measure all the elements that make up the carbon footprint.  This has issues around where boundaries are defined, and can be very expensive to calculate.

Product carbon footprint specifications

PAS 2050 was created in October 2008 by BSI and is the first standard for calculating product carbon footprints it uses a process based method and has proved expensive to implement.  There was a significant debate when PAS 2050 was created about using process or input output models or a hybrid.  The PAS 2050 committee went to a pure process method.

ISO 14067 is based on PAS 2050, and due to be released in March 2011.