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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is Carbonostics? TOP
Carbonostics is a web-based, simplified life-cycle management (SLCM) application designed analyze the environmental impact (carbon emissions), the social impact (nutritional value), and the financial impact (cost) of any food product.
We believe that to support sustainable operational decisions in your production cycle, you need to start with some information about where your negative and positive impacts are. At this point, we believe it is not necessarily important to know the exact amount of carbon emissions that your product generates throughout its life cycle. Instead it is important to have information that helps you decide which supplier, ingredient, packaging, transportation mode or processing method allows you to strike the right balance between economic, nutritional and environmental priorities. For example, what is the environmental and financial impact of replacing local, greenhouse-grown tomatoes in your recipe with tomatoes grown in sunny country that have to be transported hundreds of kilometers to your facility? Or what is the relative impact of reducing packaging or collaborating on transport? And what is the impact on nutrition if you exchange one ingredient for another?
Carbonostics is not designed to be a acutely precise calculation of the environmental impact of your product. We leave exact life-cycle assessments to the engineers and environmental scientists. Carbonostics provides you with a high-level estimate of your environmental, nutritional, and financial impact based on your data or from pre-loaded data about the impact from similar activity and ingredients. We believe that if you can measure the relative reduction in negative impacts while at the same time measuring the relative positive impacts, you will have enough information to make sustainable decisions about your supply chain and operational practices.
Please contact Sara Pax with your specific questions regarding what Carbonostics can do for you.
Key Terms TOP
Simplified Life-Cycle Management
Simplified life-cycle management (SLCM) of a food product means that you measure and manage a smaller, yet highly relevant, amount of data related to your product’s life-cycle impacts.
With a SLCM tool you will be screening your product’s life cycle for hotspots, taking a comprehensive big-picture approach that provides a high-level understanding of where your biggest impacts are in terms of cost, carbon and nutrition.
Life-Cycle Analysis (or Assessment)
A life-cycle analysis (LCA) of your product serves as a start-to-finish investigation of every single step in the production of your product, its use and its disposal. A life-cycle analysis is a very useful tool in understanding every opportunity for waste reduction, ingredient or packaging material changes, operation improvements, packaging reduction, transportation changes or reduction, collaboration with suppliers to improve delivery options, and much much more.
A full life-cycle analysis is expensive and time consuming and should result in a very precise measurement of your environmental emissions. Carbonostics takes the same approach as an LCA, but does NOT give you a precise measurement of your environmental (carbon) emissions (in addition to your cost and nutritional values). Instead, it relies on readily-available data to provide you with an estimate to highlight where your “hot zones” are.
Carbonostics offers a way to prioritize your efforts and to understand where your opportunities are for significant reductions in your negative impact : “To decide whether an emission source is likely to be material, it helps … to do a high-level footprint analysis using estimates and readily accessible data. This analysis includes the full life cycle of the product but relies on estimates and generic data to build a high-level footprint. Significant sources of emissions can later be replaced by more specific … data.” PAS2050 Guide, Page 17, October 2008
Carbon Footprint
The equation for product carbon footprinting is the sum of all materials, energy and waste across all activities in a product’s life cycle multiplied by their emission factors. The calculation itself simply involves multiplying the activity data by the appropriate emission factors:
Carbon footprint of a given activity = Activity data (mass/volume/kWh/km) × Emission factor (CO2e per unit)
Product Carbon Footprint
A product carbon footprint (PCF) is a new term that refers to the calculation of the carbon emissions throughout the life-cycle of a product. This is a slightly more precise term that refers specifically to a product, compared to the more general term that can equally refer to a process or a facility.
Triple-Bottom-Line
Triple-Bottom-Line is used to describe the delicate balance of priorities between the financial, social, and environmental impacts of your business. It is a move away from relying only on financial reports, towards an understanding of the other assets of your business such as human capital (social), and natural capital (environmental). These assets have traditionally been hard to measure. Carbonostics brings you the first easy-to-use and affordable way to see them side-by-side.
Carbonostics delivers a triple-bottom-line analysis of your life cycle allowing you to find the right balance between the social needs of your consumers (nutritional value), the economic needs of the business (costs), and the environmental impacts (carbon emissions) you have on the natural world.
Similar Activity
Throughout Carbonostics, you will be asked to choose from a list of similar activity to the ones in your supply chain and life cycle. We are constrained by the current availability of accurate and credible carbon emissions data and therefore ask that you look through the list and choose ingredients that best match the ones in your product recipe.
We believe that we are offering the best of what is currently available and ask your tolerance in any inaccuracies or compromises you may need to make during your analysis. We are very hopeful that over the next few years, more and more complete carbon emissions data will become available and we will load them in Carbonostics as soon as they are published and verified. You will be able to revisit your analysis and update it regularly with new scenarios using new data for no additional charge.
We strongly believe that something is better than nothing, and that by knowing your relative impact based on similar activity, you will identify areas of opportunity for improvement that you never knew existed. This is a practical and affordable approach given the current limitations in availability of precise data.
Why should I do a simplified life-cycle analysis? TOP
A quick-scan, life cycle analysis as provided by Carbonostics is a very useful tool in understanding your environmental impact throughout your supply chain and beyond. It helps you get a complete view of your product’s impact and helps identify where opportunities lie for improvement. With the mindset of reducing your negative impacts and increasing your positive impacts, a simplified LCA can help you make decisions on where to focus your efforts, resources, and activity.
Where should I begin with my analysis? TOP
Carbonostics takes a triple-bottom-line (cost + carbon + nutrition) approach to life cycle management. We recommend placing value on the financial costs and profits, the social costs, and the environmental impact a product generates. In real business language, this means we recommend analyzing your costs, your carbon emissions, and the nutritional value of your product – all at the same time. Carbonostics makes it easy to do this, but you have to do some homework before you can get started.
The British Standards Institute (BSI) , together with DEFRA and The Carbon Trust published PAS2050 in October 2008. PAS2050 is the first definitive standard on what constitutes a life cycle for a product or service.
For example: you will need to have an understanding of the basic flow of materials and activities in your life cycle to start using Carbonostics. Here is a chart of recommendations from the PAS2050:
While this may look a little overwhelming, a closer look will reveal it is actually just a list of the raw materials and activities . You can use the attached planner to start analyzing your flow of materials through your product’s life cycle. This will help you prepare for your use of Carbonostics and make your Carbonostics analysis go a lot easier.
Carbonostics offers what is described on page 17 of the PAS2050 Guide as a way to prioritize your efforts to understand where your opportunities are for substantial reductions in your negative impact: “To decide whether an emission source is likely to be material, it helps…to do a high-level footprint analysis using estimates and readily accessible data. This analysis includes the full life cycle of the product but relies on estimates and generic data to build a high-level footprint. Significant sources of emissions can later be replaced by more specific…data.”
What is the source of the carbon emissions data in Carbonostics? TOP
The carbon emissions database behind Carbonostics is a conglomeration of data from public and privately available sources. The largest portion of our data comes to us from our primary data partner, CLM Research and Advice, a Dutch agricultural research institute. CLM works for governments, NGOs and business on sustainable rural areas and food production. The data compiled by CLM comes from public sources, scientific studies, private information from companies, and CLM’s own calculations.
Another large part of our database was custom built by CleanMetrics, a US-based company with expertise in life-cycle assessments and carbon emissions data. Their data was collected from publicly available sources such as government and university studies.
We recognize that the measurement and publication of carbon emissions data is still very much in its infancy and there is still quite a lot of controversy about how carbon emissions data is measured and collected. While our data is based on the very best we could find, there is still a long way to go before we have a perfect set of data.
With this in mind, we will be continually updating the database behind the scenes. If you have run a report using an element of data that we update, you will have an opportunity to create a new scenario using the new piece of data to see if and how it affects your life cycle.
Also, if you know carbon data about any of the items in your supply chain – perhaps your plastics supplier has run an analysis on their product, or your sugar supplier participated in a government study – you will have the opportunity to enter this information in your report. This data will stay private to you and will not be made public to the other users of Carbonostics unless you specifically agree to it.
Throughout the food industry, there is a broad desire to standardize carbon emissions calculations. The PAS2050 is the first important publication in the effort to create a standard to measure a product’s life cycle carbon emissions. Our data conforms to the PAS2050 standard wherever possible. However, some of our historic data were generated before the publication of the PAS2050 and therefore are not based on this standard, but we believe they are valuable and reliable nonetheless. Since we do not intend Carbonostics to be a scientific study of carbon emissions, which would include things like land use change, we cannot claim the reported totals in the analysis to be in compliance with the PAS2050 standard. However, we hope that the data available on carbon emissions will normalize and improve and so we have expressly designed Carbonostics to be able to take in frequent data updates and replacements.
As new and better data is published, Carbonostics will be one of the first to bring it to you.
Finally, we hope that in the next few years a credible agency or government will develop a comprehensive and definitive database of carbon emissions. When they do, we will incorporate that data into Carbonostics for all to use. In the meantime, we will do our best to keep the data as accurate as possible and to provide you with background material behind each piece of data so you can make judgments about each one and decide which to use in your analysis. We are of the belief that something is better than nothing, and that by knowing your relative impact based on similar activity, you will identify areas of opportunity for improvement that you never knew existed.
What methodology was used in the creation of the carbon emissions data? TOP
The carbon emissions data in Carbonostics is unique and is a conglomeration of private and public data. Each data point has a link to the source and a description of the methodology used to create that piece of data.
What is the source of the nutrition data in Carbonostics? TOP
Unlike carbon emissions data, nutritional data is a well known quantity. We have chosen to pull our nutritional data from the United States Department of Agriculture National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference.
What does "consumer use" mean in my analysis? TOP
The consumer use phase of a life cycle measures the environmental impact your product has when it gets to the consumer. In most cases, this is the waste from the packaging of the product. In other cases, it also includes the energy needed to freeze or cook the product. It has been shown that by encouraging consumers to use a microwave to cook a product, or reduce their water temperature on their washing machine, you can have a positive effect on the total environmental impact of your product, even after it leaves you. There are 3 general sections of consumer use – energy, waste from packaging, and food waste. These are often the hardest part of a life cycle to measure. This is how Carbonostics deals with each of these elements:
- We have gathered data that measures the average carbon emissions of a microwave oven, a refrigerator, a freezer, and a conventional oven. We used these data to calculate an estimate of carbon emissions generated by the energy used by the consumer to actually store, cook and eat your product in their home.
- For packaging waste, we are in the process of incorporating the disposal stage of packaging in our model.
- While we are fairly certain that a certain percentage of food is wasted after purchase, we do not have a reliable way to calculate the carbon emissions from that waste. So, for the moment, Carbonostics bases its estimates on the assumption that 100% of the product is consumed.
If you have questions about the consumer use calculations, or would like to contribute research to generating these estimates, please contact Sara Pax.
Can I share an account with my colleagues? TOP
Setting up your account is free. You pay only for each product analysis that you initiate. You have the opportunity to identify other Carbonostics users with whom you want to share your analyses. With this in mind, we encourage you to maintain your own account with your own private userID and password. However, there are no rules against sharing accounts.
I have some data on the carbon emissions of some of my ingredients, can I still use Carbonostics? TOP
If you know carbon data about any of the items in your supply chain – perhaps your plastics supplier has run an analysis on their product, or your sugar supplier participated in a government study – you will have the opportunity to enter this information in your report. This data will stay private to you and will not be made public to the other users of Carbonostics unless you specifically agree to it.
I don’t see all my ingredients in your database, what should I do? TOP
The database behind Carbonostics is intended to be a starting point for ingredients and life cycle activity. There is an option to request additional research on an ingredient or activity as you build your life cycle if you have not found a similar one in our database. That request will be directed to our data partners who will do the research necessary to add your ingredient or activity to the database. It is possible that you will incur an additional fee to cover the time needed to do the research on your request. A representative will contact you when the request is received to discuss cost and delivery timeline.
There is also an option available to you to “scale” your ingredients up to the full weight of your product. You will be presented with this option when you enter the elements in your life cycle. The idea is that if you have found 95% of the total weight of the product, but can’t find the remaining 5%, we can calculate a relative figure based on the data you’ve already entered to account for 100% of the weight of the product. As an estimate, this is truly a starting point for your thinking and should be treated as such. As stated previously, it is intended to give you an idea of where your opportunities for greater sustainability and reduced environmental impact lie, rather than exact carbon emissions numbers.
If you have further questions about this, please contact Sara Pax.
My ingredients are slightly different than your data. How do I account for this in my analysis? TOP
Because of the limitations on available carbon emissions data, we have tried to provide the best possible verifiable data in Carbonostics. The tool provides you with modular flexibility to add more or less environmental impact based on your particular situation For example – you can add the distance travelled for each of your raw ingredients and packaging materials, from their place of “birth” to your manufacturing facility. If the ingredient first travels by ocean, then by train, and then by truck to reach your facility, you can add a line item for each of method of transport. If, however, your ingredients come from a local farm 20km away, and just travel by truck to your facility, you can enter that too. We recommend you find the closest possible match to your ingredients and keep in mind the possible variability when you start creating your scenarios.
If you have further questions about this, please contact Sara Pax.
Is my data secure and confidential? TOP
Any data you enter in Carbonostics is secure and not shared with anyone else without your express permission. The carbon emissions database in Carbonostics is intended for use within Carbonostics reports, and users may export their reports from the Table page and have access for their private use. Carbonostics data is not to be shared or published outside of these settings without the express written permission of Blue Horse Associates. Any violation of this confidentiality may be subject to legal action. Questions about data confidentiality may be sent to Sara Pax.
What is the price of a Carbonostics analysis? TOP
Carbonostics is intended to be an affordable alternative to costly and time-consuming life-cycle analyses. As stated in the PAS2050 Guide to Life Cycle Analysis: “ it helps…to do a high-level footprint analysis using estimates and readily accessible data. This analysis includes the full life cycle of the product but relies on estimates and generic data to build a high-level footprint.” Page 17, PAS2050 Guide, October 2008. With that in mind, our pricing is designed to encourage you to use the tool as a first step in developing your sustainable operational practices.
Please contact our Sales team for more information on the best subscription package for your needs.
If you have a promotional coupon code, you will be prompted to enter it on the payment screen. Discounts will be taken immediately of the price of your analysis. Blue Horse Associates reserves the right to not renew discounts and coupons that have expired.
Who is Blue Horse Associates? TOP
Blue Horse Associates is a network of sustainability experts focused on the food and consumer goods industries with headquartered in Paris, France with field office in the UK, Belgium and the US. We work with our clients to make sustainability relevant to their business, their brands, and their stakeholders.
Our expertise centers on strategic and operational decisions surrounding supplier relationships, sourcing, and sustainable policies. More information can be found at www.bluehorseassociates.com.
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