The World’s Largest Sustainability Database for Food Products Brings Granular Reporting on GHG Emissions to Allow Brands to Track and Reduce their Carbon Footprint

HowGood, an independent research company with the world’s largest ingredient sustainability database, today announced the release of its new Scope 3 Emissions Reporting feature for CPG food brands and foodservice companies to meet the growing demands of ESG reporting. The new feature will allow organizations in the food industry to accurately measure and report on their Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions (GHGe), the indirect emissions produced in the upstream agricultural supply chain. HowGood’s Scope 3 Reporting draws from the robust data available within its SaaS platform Latis, the leading sustainability intelligence platform featuring impact analysis on over 33,000 ingredients across eight environmental and social impact metrics.

Emerging regulations in the United States and Europe, such as those proposed by the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), are expected to mandate that companies report on their Scope 3 emissions. With nearly 87% of a food company’s GHG emissions in the Scope 3 category, CPG food brands and foodservice companies can face unique challenges in gathering the needed data from their various suppliers to provide an accurate report.

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HowGood’s Scope 3 Reporting removes the barriers of supplier data collection by drawing emission factors from its database of over 600 vetted data sources, including Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) research, peer-reviewed environmental impact studies, government and NGO publications, and aggregated commercial databases. Instead of relying on global average emissions data or the spend-based method – practices commonly used to estimate scope 3 emissions – the specificity of HowGood’s ingredient database accounts for crop- and location-based emission factors and consideration of specific growing practices. As the database is designed explicitly for food companies, this approach brings a level of granularity that is essential for companies looking to not only report on their emissions, but also measure and manage their impact over time using more accurate data.

With an aim to service companies who have made public carbon reduction commitments or set internal carbon targets, HowGood focuses on Category 1 (Purchased Goods and Services) and Category 4 (Upstream Transportation and Distribution) for their initial release. Not only do these categories account for 70+% of a company’s total Scopes 1, 2, and 3 emissions, they are also the most difficult to measure and manage. Using global averages to report on these categories – as opposed to HowGood’s ingredient and location-specific emission factors – can introduce risk to businesses, as they have been found to result in Scope 3 calculations that are significantly inaccurate.

“There is mounting pressure from regulatory bodies and consumers alike for food companies to reduce their carbon emissions, and yet few tools are available to accurately measure the most impactful parts of the agricultural supply chain, “ said Alexander Gillett, CEO at HowGood. “It’s critical for food brands to be able to quickly and easily identify their most problematic ingredients so that they can actually improve their footprint – and then communicate about those improvements downstream to retailers and consumers.”

HowGood’s Scope 3 reporting is built on the GHG Protocol’s Product Standard and Corporate Value Chain Standard and is CDP- and GRI-compliant. Users receive methodological documentation to maintain the most accurate and strictest standards of carbon reporting. Delivered within a SaaS platform, it enables Sustainability, Procurement, and R&D teams to map emissions on the ingredient, product, or portfolio level with real-time updates and carbon reduction scenario planning capabilities.

Scope 3 Reporting for CPG food brands and foodservice companies is available now, with capabilities for retailers and suppliers to follow in the first quarter of 2023. To learn more about HowGood and its Scope 3 Reporting feature, please visit www.HowGood.com.

Source: HowGood