Environmental News Network: How good or how bad is a product from a green carbon footprint point of view? Several well known corporations like Airbus, Levi Strauss & Co., 3M, DuPont, and Kraft Foods are volunteering to road test a full life cycle greenhouse gas analysis on a wide range of products from blue jeans to manufactured steel.
A life cycle analysis studies all the potential contributions to a carbon footprint and includes supplier, transportation, production and disposal. This concept is also related to environmental sustainability.
he Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard and the Scope 3 (Corporate Value Chain) Accounting and Reporting Standard, provides innovative methods to measure a product’s full life cycle emissions is the planned method to be used. In all sixty corporations have been chosen to participate.
The standard was developed with a multi-stakeholder, consensus based process to develop greenhouse gas accounting and reporting standards with participation from businesses, government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and academic institutions from around the world. This draft standard was developed between January and October 2009 by two technical working groups collectively comprised of over 70 members from a diversity of businesses, government agencies, NGOs, and academic institutions.
“We are encouraged by the overwhelming response from the private sector seeking to road test the new standards. There were more than 120 applications across a broad array of sectors and regions worldwide. The road testing will provide critical input in ensuring that the standards generate credible and meaningful data for business and government decision makers, while considering the practical challenges that businesses and programs will face during implementation,” said Jonathan Lash in a press release. Lash is president of the World Resources Institute, which developed the standards along with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.
The new standards will also allow companies to look at the greenhouse gas emissions of their full corporate value chain, including supplier manufacturing, outsourced activities, and the products’ ultimate consumption.