Global Carbon Footprinting Catalysed By Launch of New International Standard

The Carbon Trust is announcing that it is the first organisation to offer a service certifying to the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) new international standard for measuring and reporting product carbon footprints.

Carbon Trust Certification is launching the new service using the new GHG Protocol Product Lifecycle Standard. The World Resources Institute and World Business Council for Sustainable Development developed the new product standard, along with the Corporate Value Chain standard, to improve the ability of companies to measure and report on their greenhouse gas emissions. The Carbon Trust’s new service provides the option for its customers to use the new WRI/WBCSD standard and to display the internationally recognised Carbon Label, where supported by Footprint Expert™ or other additional product specifications.

The news follows research from the Carbon Trust published last week that 42% of multinational companies not currently addressing supply chain emissions, plan to do so within the next 12 months.

The new service, builds upon Carbon Trust Certification’s extensive experience of product carbon footprinting around 5,000 products since 2008. The Carbon Trust will continue to certify products to the existing carbon footprint standard, PAS 2050, against which many brands, such as Walkers Crisps; Kingsmill and Silver Spoon have successfully achieved year-on-year carbon emissions reductions.

The new standard is well suited to organisations with international operations. It was developed by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol). The Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol): a collaboration of WRI and WBCSD, is the most widely used international accounting tool for understanding, quantifying, and managing corporate greenhouse gas emissions.

As part of the Carbon Trust’s long-term commitment to supporting international standards development in this area, the Carbon Trust was a member of the Steering Groups for WRI’s Product and Scope 3 Protocols, as well as providing support to the WRI Working Group Process. This ensured not only that the Carbon Trusts practical knowledge of standardisation was available to the WRI process, but also supported the wider harmonisation of international approaches to carbon footprinting.

Harry Morrison, Director, Carbon Trust Certification, said:

“Internationally-recognised standards; against which organisations can measure and reduce product carbon footprints are vital to addressing climate change. We welcome the new standard and encourage organisations certifying to it to use the Carbon Reduction Label in order to robustly communicate their product carbon footprints and reduction performance.”

In order to accurately measure the carbon footprint of products, and thereby ensure the appropriate certification under the WRI / WBCSD and PAS 2050 carbon footprinting standards, the Carbon Trust has developed the Footprint Expert™ tool. The recently updated software solution, Footprint Expert 3.3, enables even more reliable and certifiable product carbon footprint assessments.

In a pilot designed to road test its broadened certification offering, Carbon Trust Certification has already been working to certify the product carbon footprints of three organisations to the pre-launch version of the WRI/WBCSD standard:

· Mehadrin, Israel’s largest grower and exporter of citrus and other fruits and vegetables

· Newell Rubbermaid, the global marketer of consumer and commercial products,

· Suzano, a forestry based company that has been operating in market pulp and paper for the last 87 years

Warmen Dov, Business Development Manager, Mehadrin, said:

“Our experience with the Carbon Trust in this WRI pilot has been very positive. Thanks to the opportunity offered by the Carbon Trust we are now proud to be within the first few companies to have tested 3rd party verification to the new WRI Product Standard.

The expertise demonstrated by the Carbon Trust in the previous PAS 2050 certification had convinced us to accept this new challenge and their competence and support throughout the process allows us now to have a better understanding of the requirements of this new WRI standard. The pilot has provided us with deeper insights into our products’ carbon footprint and has highlighted some new opportunities to report our footprinting work to our customers and the wider public.”

Balaji Jayaseelan, Program Manager for Environmental & Sustainability at Newell Rubbermaid, said:

“Newell Rubbermaid’s PaperMate brand is proud to participate in a pilot certification to the draft World Resources Institute (WRI) greenhouse gas (GHG) standard for products and services and aims to be the first writing instrument entity to achieve certification under the new standard which will be launched on October 4, 2011.”

The new ‘Product’ and ‘Corporate Value Chain’ GHG Protocol standards are an important first step to global consistency of approach. On top of these standards businesses need sector based initiatives, to bring further consistency, and ease of implementation. Carbon Trust Advisory will be working in partnership with WRI/WBCSD to produce Product Rules and Sector Guidance to interpret these standards for companies in a practical business environment. Carbon Trust Advisory will extend its work with trade associations, using its experience in developing such documents, and convening companies to produce practical usable documents.

Pankaj Bhatia, GHG Protocol Director, World Resources Institute, said:

“We are excited to see that interested users of the GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Standard can also seek certification of their product inventory from Carbon Trust. This certification will be a helpful addition to Product Standard inventory reports when they are reported to consumers, We look forward to working with Carbon Trust to develop additional guidance and product specifications to support the use of Carbon Trust Certification in conformance with our standard.”