Measuring the carbon footprint of something requires thinking about the entire life cycle of the product, including the emissions from product after the point of sale.
These are called Use Phase emissions, and in the GHG Protocol they are listed under Scope 3, Category 11: Use of Sold Products.
There are two types of Use Phase emissions, direct and indirect.
Direct use phase emissions are GHG’s that come from using the product. These include things that consume energy (like automobiles), or have incidental GHG emissions during use (like aerosols).
Use emissions are quantifiable like this:
Use Phase Emissions per product = Emissions per Use * Uses per product
Direct use phase emissions are mandatory to report in every GHG reporting framework, including the CSRD (Section ESRS E1 AR3.b) .
Indirect emissions are emissions incurred from use indirectly. This includes clothing (from washing and drying), food (cooking and refrigeration), and cosmetic products (heating water for use).
Indirect emissions are harder to measure as they depend more on the user profile and some specifics about the use habits, geography and more.
Indirect emissions are not mandatory to report, but we will see that most cosmetic companies tend to report them anyway.
An example we encounter a lot are the use phase emissions for a shampoo product.
Shampoo does not have any ‘direct use’ emissions. However, the indirect emissions are significant.
To calculate them you need to know the following:
For a shampoo product, we utilize a 10.46g Functional unit, based on this study.