BSI British Standards, the Carbon Trust and Defra recently launched PAS 2050 – Assessment of the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of goods and services attracting media coverage from BBC News Online, the Telegraph, the FT and other trade press including Farmers’ Guardian, BusinessGreen, Bakery Info and Environmental Expert. The PAS enables businesses to assess the carbon footprint of their goods and services and play a greater part in fighting climate change.
Speaking at the launch event Environment Secretary Hilary Benn MP said: “Companies have said they want to be able to count their carbon emissions in a better way, so we have responded. You can’t see or count emissions when you buy a product but consumers want to know that emissions are being cut by businesses and this standard will help businesses to do that.”
PAS 2050 is a consistent way of counting the greenhouse gas emissions embedded in goods and services throughout their entire life cycle – from sourcing raw materials, through to manufacture, distribution, use and disposal. The aim of the new standard is to help businesses move beyond managing the emissions their own processes create and to look at the opportunities for reducing emissions in the design, making and supplying of products. This will then help businesses make goods or services which are less carbon intensive and ultimately develop new products with lower carbon footprints.
The Carbon Trust has already piloted PAS 2050 with 75 product ranges across a wide range of companies including: PepsiCo, Boots, Innocent, Marshalls, Tesco, Cadbury, Halifax, Coca Cola, Kimberly Clark, The Co-operative Group, Scottish & Newcastle, Coors Brewers, Muller, British Sugar, ABAgri, Sainsbury’s, Danone, Continental Clothing Company, Colors Fruit, Morphy Richards, Mey Selections and Aggregate Industries.
Some of the results include:
- For its Botanics shampoo, Boots has redesigned its logistics network so that products could be delivered direct to stores, reducing road miles and packaging, this alone has reduced the carbon footprint of making the shampoo by 10 per cent.
- By working with one of its suppliers, Innocent helped identify an opportunity for the supplier to set up a group of employees to look at how they could increase the amount of waste materials being recycled throughout the factory. In the first month, waste to landfill was reduced by 15 per cent, and within six months the reduction reached 54 per cent.
Defra has also carried out research testing of the PAS on up to 100 food products through their production, manufacture and distribution and is studying the greenhouse gas impacts of food preparation and consumption in the home.
Mike Low, Director of BSI British Standards, said: “Our hope is that the PAS will be used widely by organizations of all sizes and sectors. The standard is the latest addition to BSI’s rapidly expanding stable of standards and tools in the area of sustainability and the environment, which enable organizations to manage their operations in a more sustainable manner.”
PAS 2050 will pave the way for business to provide transparent and reliable information on the carbon content of their products.
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