Product carbon footprint in packaging: what your clients are about to start asking for

A few years ago, sustainability was a conversation about image. Today it's a conversation about data. And for many companies in the packaging sector, that conversation is arriving in the form of a spreadsheet, a form, or a call from a client's procurement manager asking for "the product carbon footprint of the items you supply us."

That's how regulatory pressure works. It doesn't hit the whole market at once — it starts with the largest accounts and trickles down, supplier by supplier, until it reaches your company. If you haven't received that request yet, you're probably already on the list.

Why this is happening now

Large manufacturers in automotive, consumer goods, electronics, and food have spent years working to reduce their emissions. But when they measure their corporate footprint using the most widely adopted standard, the GHG Protocol, they find that Scopes 1 and 2 (direct emissions and own energy consumption) only account for a fraction of the total impact. The larger share — in many cases more than 70% — sits in Scope 3: what happens upstream and downstream, across the supply chain and in the use of their products.

Packaging falls squarely in that category. The materials that protect a product, the manufacturing process of the container, the transport of packaging from the supplier's plant to the client's production line — all of that is Scope 3 for the buyer. And to measure that impact accurately, they need data from those who make it. In other words, your data.

Add to that the regulatory layer. The CSRD already requires large European companies to report their entire value chain. The Ecodesign Regulation pushes toward packaging that can justify its environmental impact from the outset. And the decarbonisation targets that many consumer brands have publicly committed to cannot be met unless their suppliers also measure and reduce their own emissions.

What they will specifically ask for

The way this requirement arrives varies, but the substance is always the same: they need to know how many kilograms of CO₂ equivalent are emitted in the manufacture of a specific product or reference. Sometimes they call it a product footprint, sometimes a PCF (Product Carbon Footprint), sometimes they ask for a life cycle assessment or an environmental product declaration.

In practice, what the supplier needs to be able to answer is what emissions are generated from raw material extraction through to the product leaving the factory gate. That means tracing the input materials, the production processes, energy consumption, supply transport, and documenting it in a way the client can incorporate into their own calculation.

The problem is that many companies in this sector don't have that process in place. They have the data (somewhere in the ERP, in purchasing records, in energy invoices... but it's not organised to respond to this kind of request quickly, traceably, and repeatably.

The real cost of not being ready

When the request comes in and there's no structured response, the cost isn't just the time spent hunting for data. The real cost shows up as a contract renewal that stalls because environmental documentation is missing, a qualification process blocked while other suppliers have already responded, or a tender where the client moves forward with whoever can provide that information — and those who can't simply don't make it in.

Competitive positioning is starting to differentiate not just on price or quality, but on the ability to respond to these requirements with agility. And the sectors where this is already standard practice — automotive, electrical components, industrial consumer goods — foreshadow what will reach other sectors sooner than many companies expect.

Where to start

The good news is that you don't need to have everything figured out to start responding. What makes the difference isn't having perfect data from day one — it's having a process that allows you to build a solid first response, document it, and repeat it when the next request comes in.

The starting point isn't the calculation. It's understanding exactly what your client is asking for, defining a reasonable scope for the first deliverable, and organising the information you already have before looking for what you're missing.

If you've already received the first request, or you know it's coming, there's a structured path to tackling it without disrupting operations. We've put together a specific guide for suppliers that explains, step by step, how to respond to product footprint requirements: how to interpret what you're being asked, what data is essential, how to build a first calculation that holds up with the client, and how to lay the groundwork so this doesn't depend on a one-off effort every time.