SB Brand-Led Culture Change 2024 - Full Program Announced!

Chemistry, Materials & Packaging
BASF to Release Carbon Footprint Data for Its 45K Products

The chemical giant has been a leader in innovative approaches to quantifying the impacts of its diverse product portfolio.

BASF has announced that it has achieved transparent emissions data for its entire portfolio of approximately 45,000 products. The company can now provide its customers with the carbon footprint — or total value of CO~2~ emissions — for each of its products.

Demand is increasing for companies to be able to calculate the environmental impacts of products and to make that data widely accessible. BASF’s Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) comprises all product-related greenhouse gas emissions that occur until the product leaves the factory gate for the customer — from the raw material to the use of energy in production processes.

“By calculating the CO~2~ footprint, we create much greater transparency for our customers regarding the specific emissions for each BASF product,” says Dr. Martin Brudermüller, Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of BASF SE. “This enables us to develop plans together with our customers to reduce CO~2~ emissions along the value chain up to the final consumer product.”

BASF has been a leader in quantifying the impacts of its massive portfolio of products. In the past few years, the company has developed a number of innovative frameworks — including the Sustainable Solutions Steering Method, which BASF used to systematically review and evaluate the sustainability aspects of its product portfolio; the biomass balance approach, in which fossil-based ingredients are replaced by renewable raw materials to reduce impacts; and even a way to measure a business’s contribution to society. The chemical giant says it will start making PCF data available for selected product and customer segments in the coming months, with data for the entire portfolio to be available by the end of 2021.

Decoding effective methods of driving consumer behavior change

Join us for a transformational experience at SB Brand-Led Culture Change — May 8-10 in Minneapolis. This event brings together hundreds of brand leaders eager to delve into radical lifestyle shifts and sustainable consumer behavior change at scale. The trends driving cultural acceleration are already underway, and you can be at the forefront of this transformative movement.

“Climate protection issues are also becoming increasingly important for our customers. In the future, we will be able to support them with reliable data so that they can achieve their climate targets,” said Christoph Jäkel, Head of Corporate Sustainability. “With the help of PCFs, our customers can identify where the levers for avoiding greenhouse gas emissions are. We are already offering them the opportunity to reduce the carbon footprint of selected products by using alternative raw materials and renewable energies.”

BASF highlights the need for product-specific guidelines for the calculation of PCFs in the chemical industry, in order to create an industry-wide level playing field and comparability for products.

“We are working with various partners to promote standardization,” Jäkel says.

Read more about the Product Carbon Footprint here.

Advertisement