Amid increasing regulatory pressures and rising consumer demand for transparency, companies across industries are facing growing challenges in accurately measuring and disclosing the environmental impact of their products. In the metal packaging sector, where the carbon footprint of packaging and carbon-intensive supply chains are common, credible product sustainability disclosures and a focus on sustainable operations have become a critical differentiator. These efforts influence both customer trust and market access.
A global metal packaging producer with manufacturing facilities in North America, Europe, and South America needed an in-house product carbon footprint (PCF) calculator for its business to estimate the packaging footprint and cradle-to-gate GHG emissions across its entire portfolio. The calculator was also required to support customer-facing carbon disclosures and enable emissions allocation based on procurement data.
Arcadis brought a global, integrated team of experts across GHG accounting, life cycle assessment, data analysis, and custom-led digital tooling implementation. Together with the client, we co-developed a robust and scalable PFC calculator built to last, including:
- Detailed GHG emissions estimates for each metal can type and size produced, broken down by Scope 1, 2, and 3, as well as lifecycle stage
- Summarized reporting capabilities at global, regional, and facility levels
- Facilitation of customer-specific emissions allocation based on actual sales data
- Built-in Python scripts to automate data upload, cleaning, and transformation for future use.
The client can now confidently share product-level carbon emissions with customers and key stakeholders—meeting disclosure requests quickly and accurately, reinforcing their commitments and reducing any reputational risks with credible, verifiable product-level claims. This has not only strengthened client relationships but also improved their visibility into facility-level emissions drivers.
As the tool was built on dynamic, standardized, and verifiable methods, aligned with industry-leading practices, it is currently undergoing third-party validation, positioning the client strongly in the market moving forward. With automation and scalability embedded into our delivered solution, the PCF calculator is transparent, credible, and future-ready—supporting annual updates, as well as additional features and functionalities over time.
I really like the relationship we’ve built, appreciate that you’ve put up with us being challenging as a client, and would like to keep this going. We see this as the beginning of the journey with you, and we would like to do a lot more work together.
This was a real success by our team in delivering quality work and navigating a complex project to estimate the carbon footprint for the client’s portfolio at the individual product level.
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