Glossary of terms related to
carbon footprint measurement

Landfill gas is a combustible gas, mainly methane and carbon dioxide, produced by the anaerobic decomposition of organic matter in landfills. Capturing it reduces emissions and provides renewable energy.

Impact assessment in the CSRD identifies a company's effects on the environment and society as part of the double materiality analysis. We explain what it entails and how the Omnibus has changed it.

Imported virtual water is the freshwater embedded in the goods and services a country or company buys from other territories. It reveals hidden external water dependencies and supply risks.

Incineration with energy recovery is the thermal treatment of non-recyclable waste that reduces its volume and hazard while using the heat of combustion to generate electricity, steam or hot water.

The indirect water footprint covers the water used upstream in an organisation's supply chain, often the largest share of its total footprint. Here is how to measure and reduce it.

Collaboration between companies in which the waste, by-products, energy or water of one become a resource for another. The Kalundborg park in Denmark is its best-known example.

Inert waste is stable material (concrete, bricks, ceramics, clean soil) that does not decompose or react, and that, despite its large volume, can largely be recovered as recycled aggregate.

An inert waste landfill is a controlled disposal facility dedicated exclusively to waste that undergoes no significant physical, chemical or biological change, such as concrete, bricks and aggregates from construction and demolition.

Integrating the ESRS into corporate strategy means turning the CSRD reporting obligation into a management lever. The 2026 review (ESRS 2.0) cuts more than 60% of mandatory data points, but keeps double materiality and climate as central pillars.

How to move the European Sustainability Reporting Standards from a reporting exercise into corporate strategy, including the 2026 simplification of the ESRS and the post-Omnibus scope.

A monetary value per tonne of CO2e that a company applies to its own activity to steer investment, anticipate regulation and accelerate decarbonisation.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is an intergovernmental organisation that provides energy data, policy advice and decarbonization scenarios such as its Net Zero Emissions by 2050 pathway.

ISO is the global federation of national standards bodies that develops voluntary international standards covering quality, the environment, energy, health and safety and much more, used to build trust and remove barriers to trade.

The IPCC reviews and synthesises the global scientific evidence on climate change, producing the assessment reports that underpin international agreements such as the Paris Agreement.

ISO 14000 is a family of international standards that helps organisations manage their environmental impact, from environmental management systems to greenhouse gas quantification.

ISO 14001 is the world's most widely used standard for environmental management systems. The revised ISO 14001:2026 was published in April 2026 and puts climate at the centre.

ISO 14006:2020 offers guidelines for embedding ecodesign into an ISO 14001 environmental management system. It is guidance, not a certifiable requirements standard, and supports EU ecodesign rules.

ISO 14025 is the international standard for Type III environmental declarations (EPDs): verified, LCA-based reports that present a product's environmental impacts in a comparable, third-party-checked format.

ISO 14040 is the international standard that defines the principles and framework for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), structured into four phases: goal and scope, inventory, impact assessment and interpretation.

ISO 14044 sets the requirements and guidelines for conducting a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), complementing the framework defined in ISO 14040.

ISO 14046 is the international standard for quantifying the water footprint using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, ensuring transparency and comparability.

ISO 14064 is the international standard that sets out how to quantify, report and verify greenhouse gas emissions and removals at organisation and project level.

ISO 14067 sets out how to quantify and communicate the carbon footprint of a product across its life cycle, based on life cycle assessment principles.

ISO 14068-1:2023 is the international standard that sets requirements to quantify, reduce, offset and verify emissions in order to claim carbon neutrality.

ISO 14083 is the global standard, published in 2023, that harmonises how greenhouse gas emissions from passenger and freight transport are calculated and reported.

ISO 20121 is the international standard setting the requirements for a sustainability management system for events. The 2024 revision replaced the 2012 edition.

ISO 9001 is the world's leading quality management system standard. In the waste sector it helps operators control processes, ensure traceability and demonstrate reliability to clients and regulators.

The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) develops the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards, IFRS S1 and IFRS S2, creating a global baseline for sustainability and climate reporting.

The Just Transition Fund is the EU's main instrument for supporting regions and workers most affected by decarbonisation, with a budget of around €17.5 billion for 2021-2027.

The Just Transition Mechanism (JTM) is an EU instrument that channels funding to the regions and communities most affected by the move to a climate-neutral economy.

The Kyoto Protocol was the first international treaty to set binding greenhouse gas reduction targets for developed countries, and the forerunner of today's Paris Agreement.

Law 2169 of 2021 puts Colombia's climate targets into statute: a 51% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, carbon neutrality by 2050 and zero net natural forest deforestation. For companies, the key provision is article 16, which creates the mandatory GHG emissions report (ROE).

Law 27,520 is Argentina's framework law on minimum standards for global climate change adaptation and mitigation. It was passed on 20 November 2019, published in the Official Gazette on 20 December 2019 and implemented by Decree 1030/2020. It creates the National Climate Change Cabinet, the National Adaptation and Mitigation Plan and the National Climate Change Information System. It does not, by itself, require private companies to measure or report their emissions.

Spain's Law 7/2022 on waste and contaminated soils for a circular economy replaced Law 22/2011, transposing EU directives and introducing green taxes, single-use plastic bans and recycling targets.

Leachate is a polluting liquid generated mainly in landfills when water percolates through waste. Controlling and treating it is essential to protect soil and water.

LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a globally recognised points-based rating system for sustainable buildings, now in its fifth version.

LER codes (LER stands for Lista Europea de Residuos, the European List of Waste) are six-digit references that classify every type of waste in the EU and are mandatory for waste documentation.

What Life Cycle Assessment is, its four standardised phases, the ISO standards behind it, its main applications and limitations, and where the methodology is heading.

LCIA is the phase of an LCA that translates inventory flows into impact categories such as climate change, acidification or water scarcity. Manglai helps you put it into practice.

The LCI is the data-gathering phase of an LCA: it quantifies every material, energy, water and emission flow of a product or process and feeds the impact assessment.

Lightweighting reduces the material used in a product or packaging without losing function, cutting raw-material use, waste, emissions and logistics costs in the circular economy.

Littering means abandoning small items of waste in public and natural spaces. A guide to its causes, its impact on nature and cities, and the policies designed to curb it.

A low-carbon economy is an economic system designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions across every sector through clean energy, efficiency and sustainable practices.

A low-carbon supply chain systematically measures and reduces emissions across suppliers, logistics and materials, a decisive lever for companies because most of their footprint sits in Scope 3.

Urban areas that restrict access for the most polluting vehicles to improve air quality, mandatory in Spain for municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants.

A practical guide to industrial waste: definition, hazardous and non-hazardous types, the EU and Spanish legal framework, and how good management feeds the circular economy.

Linear sustainability is an approach that makes the traditional take-make-dispose model more efficient without redesigning it, a useful first step but not a substitute for the circular economy.

The landfill rate measures the percentage of waste disposed of in landfill versus the total generated, signalling how far a territory still relies on final disposal rather than recovery.