Footprint Calculation: Carbon and Environmental Metrics

Environmental Footprint in DPPs

The environmental footprint of a product quantifies its impact across multiple categories, including climate change (carbon footprint), resource depletion, water use, and pollution. The ESPR requires many product categories to declare their environmental footprint in the Digital Product Passport, calculated according to standardised methodologies.

The Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) methodology, developed by the European Commission, provides the framework for calculating these impacts consistently across manufacturers and product categories.

Carbon Footprint Calculation

Carbon footprint calculation for DPPs follows a lifecycle approach:

• Raw material extraction and processing emissions
• Manufacturing and assembly energy consumption
• Transportation and logistics across the supply chain
• Use-phase energy consumption where applicable
• End-of-life treatment including recycling and disposal

Each stage requires reliable data, either from direct measurement (primary data) or from established databases (secondary data). The ESPR specifies which data sources and quality levels are acceptable.

Data Sources and Quality

Footprint calculations rely on a mix of primary data from your own operations and secondary data from lifecycle inventory databases. Primary data is preferred for processes under your direct control, while secondary data from recognised databases covers upstream and downstream processes.

The European Commission is developing product-specific rules that define which data must be primary and which can be secondary, ensuring comparability between products in the same category.

Declaring Footprints in Your DPP

When declaring environmental footprints in your Digital Product Passport, include the methodology used, the scope of the calculation, key assumptions, and the resulting values with appropriate units.

MyProductPassport provides structured fields for environmental footprint data, ensuring your declarations meet ESPR formatting and content requirements.