As the race to net zero intensifies, many businesses have measured their operational emissions and are now starting to consider the carbon embodied in their products or services.
While some enterprises have customers asking for this information, others may be required to provide it under emerging legislation. Whatever the driving force, understanding the impact of your product or service is the first step to identifying ways to reduce it. Sometimes just a few simple changes can make a dramatic difference to your emissions and, in most cases, improve your bottom line.
But where do you start? And how do you do it?
Good we’re all good to go so welcome everybody in the room and we’ve also got people online by the spot platform um hopefully you’re going be in for a real treat on an otherwise gray and cold day so um yeah we’re gonna basically oh before I even get to there
Housekeeping otherwise I get shouted out by Amber so um there’s no fire drills planned this afternoon the evening if the alarm does go it’s real and there’s basically two exits you can see where they are um and then the assembly point is do you know where the Dr Le the
Reservoir is basically over there by the cafe so um but yeah hopefully we won’t have the alarm going off um if you haven’t already found them the L are at the back and there’s three unex l so just just use them as you as you need to
Um courtesy really phones to silent um we would probably we’ll do £1 fee if anyone’s F phone does go off and then I think Sarah can nominate the charity if we get any donation my so no so welcome everybody um so we’ve got some people online as well so
As we go through anybody online just feel free to ask questions um any point so to get going really I just want to give you an introduction so today’s all around assessing your products impact so looking at um carbon footprinting of products but also if you’re a service
Based business there’s quite a bit of read over um so uh just I was going to talk a little bit about um net Zen itself so that’s a sort of successor to a really successful program that Plymouth university did called Low carbon Devon and swimmer I’ll tell you
About me in a minute but we worked a lot with low carbon de so it’s great to see that net ense um got got the sport is up and running so um anything else you want to add there I’m just to say that net Zer exchange is a platform uh a project
That’s bring together researchers and businesses hope you hear me um and yeah you would have joined by for coming on to this event so please explore the platform and see what you can find on there okay thank you um so what we’re g to take you through this afternoon once
We’ve done the little intro um we’re then going to set the scene by giving you a bit of a framework from the legal perspective and I’m really pleased we’ve got Adam and Sarah from wble Bon Dickinson I used to find that a mouthful but it’s it’s it’s rolling off the
Tongue now um so they’re going to give us a sort of framework of where we’re at in terms of current future legislation and I think Adam May touch on um sort of green green washing and and the sort of danger areas around that um then we’re
Going to have a Q&A after that because it might throw up some some worries might throw up some concerns so the whole point of today is just that we’re not pcking it the full agenda so we want loads of time to ask questions and get
The best we can from the people in the room the experts but also get a good bit of networking going on um take a little short break then and then I’ll be coming back and talking you through um the theory of product C foot printing which in itself probably could
Be a week’s course we’re going to condense that to about 20 25 minutes so it’s going to be fairly high level but hopefully give you the tools to to do this for your own products and your own businesses and then really pleased is he here here excellent yeah um so we’ve got
Russ wman from two drifters run to actually tell you how they’ve done it um so right from the horse’s mouth and it’s a really interesting case stud you got some really interesting conclusions that come from it so and then we’re just going to sort of bring It to a close any
Final questions and then I think I suppose if there’s anybody that wants to engage further with the Net Zero exchange they can talk to CLA or Amber Paul you still gonna be around yeah yeah fine um so yeah it’s going to be fairly informal um so just I think everybody’s
Happy to take questions as they come up um so with no further Ado I’ll hand over to Adam you first Sarah’s first okay um very simple just left thank you very much okay well good afternoon everybody my name is Sarah Holmes and I am a legal
Director at I’m not quite sure where to stand actually I see my notes um so I’m a legal director at wble Dickson which is a transatlantic Law Firm I’ve been specializing in environmental law since 199 um and Paul and I have shared various platforms over the years years as we’ve
Looked at the development of environmental law firstly from the 1990s as a point source pollution control focus and then uh it’s gathered greater scope and now we’re looking at some really quite complex Market mechanisms in order to change people’s behavior so I am going to cover uh C B which I will explain
What that means for those who don’t know in the moment um and Adam is going to deal with um the legislative framework claims code and extended producer responsibility at in the second half of our um presentation so the first thing we’re going to talk about is carbon border adjustment mechanism which is uh
EU legislation and we’re going I’m going to explain how it’s going to affect UK exporters to the European Union and what the UK government has in mind if it’s um empow and 2027 um in terms of introducing the same concept uh for UK uh Imports and the
Philosophy is set out on the slide I won’t repeat too much what’s uh set out here but it’s it’s basically um an effort to try to capture what is called carbon leakage so that is when we purchase products from overseas that are very carbon intensive in their
Production and we don’t take that into account in our Marketplace so there’s no price attached to those products which reflects the fact that they’ve been manufactured in a way that is um highly carbon intensive and doesn’t really uh provide an incentive if it’s not recognized um for people to change the
Way in which they manufacture and this is a common approach uh in EU environmental law of attaching price to a cost to uh inefficient or polluting uh techniques in the hope of Shifting Behavior Uh to to drive standards up so the idea is that um products that are imported into the
European Union or exported from the UK that fall within a category of products that are going to attract this in the first instance um will have to be the subject of reports by the importers and then from 2026 uh they will have they will have prices attached to them that will have
To be um pay them uh through the import um process and that is to as I say to encourage um importers to look at Alternatives if there are um less polluting less carbon emitting um products so the goods that I’m going to need my list for here to avoid making
Lots of lists on my PowerPoints I put them on here not really to read it from distance okay so um before I do the list um oh actually the list is on here sorry because I can’t see um to read if I wear my gles and I can’t uh read if I’m wear
My distance I can’t yeah so I need to be able to see so the six products that are going to be subject to seam are cement Iron and Steel aluminium fertilizer electricity and hydrogen um and the plan is that um when seam is fully uh phased in it will cover around
50% uh of the emissions that are generated in sectors that are covered by the European Union’s emissions trading scheme that we used to be a part of and now we have our own um emissions trading scheme um but um the idea is that these are highly carbon intensive sectors and the
EU wants to see prices attached to Imports of those so that they will be able to be reflected in market price um so initially cbam is only going to be applicable to raw and simple goods and then in due course as we’ve seen previous EU systems there will be expanded to other um
Sectors so um again typical of EU legislation there’s a a gradual run into the full effect um of the legislation so from at now um EU importers are going to need to get familiar with reporting on the carbon intensity of um the materials that fall within Seaburn and of and at
The moment there are several methods of calculating carbon um intensity so um there’s full reporting in accordance with the EU methodology which I actually couldn’t locate I don’t think it’s yet been published um but there will be an EU published preferred methodology um secondly there are three equivalent Methods at the moments um
That can be used and then there’s a another a third alternative which is only ailable until July this year which is report based on default references reference values um but from the 1 of January 2026 there will only be the option well there will be no option All Imports must
Use the um eu’s methodology for calculating carbon intensity um and from the point at which uh we when we get to the 1 of January 20 26 the importers will have to purchase seab Barm certificates um which will correspond to the emissions in order to put a price on
Those emissions um and the price is going to be calculated based on the weekly auction price of the um European Union’s emissions trading scheme and be expressed in in Euros per ton of carbon dioxide limitted um and what will also happen in the period from 2026 to 2034 for those
Of you who are familiar with the European Union emissions trading schemes there are free allowances in that which given to certain sectors um as part of the the trading mechanism those are going to be um phased out so um the certificates will be bought during the year they don’t have
To be brought at the point of import um but um they will need to have been acquired before the Importer submits their uh mandatory reports to the relevant Authority within the relevant member State um and to avoid double counting um there will be Provisions to enable uh account to be taken where the
Country of origin has already imposed a carbon uh tax on the manufacturer of the products um yeah so that’s that okay so what doesn’t Sean apply to it’s doesn’t apply to imports from countries uh that are within the European Union’s emissions trading scheme um there is some pressure from
Some sectors of the UK economy for the UK to align with um the EU emissions trading scheme uh in order to to minimize the barriers to trade that will be and the complexity of of exporting to the EU um but we won’t yet know I
Suspect a lot of turn on the outcome of the next general elections to have Place uh our own UK emissions training scheme looks like that but um so all members of the single Market are already within the European Union’s emissions Trading schem sche also linked countries included within are Iceland lonstein Norway and
Switzerland um and cam won’t apply as’s a day minimist threshold to uh Consignments and goods whose value does not exceed 150 um and won’t apply to good use for military activities so on the next PowerPoints which I won’t get through in detail because you’ll have these to look
Through um if you are an importer into the European Union I’ve deliberately presented this so that you can see how we’ve worked out what you’ll have to do your next alter um these are the steps um that the importers will need um to comply with so they’ll need to see
Whether the goods they’re importing are listed in Annex one to the cbam regulations um they then need to notify uh their National seam competent authority to get registered um and they will upload quarterly reports onto the SE uh competent Authority in their own member states register um obviously need to notify their
Exporters from the UK so I don’t know if anybody here is involved in exporting any of those products to the European Union no okay well the lights touched on see from now on then um but uh for those businesses that are subject to it they are going to need to pay close attention
Um to the Reg ations um and then in a mirror image we’ve looked at what steps I UK exporters will need to comply with and when I say well I’ve actually put GB exporters up here because of course Northern Ireland is in a different position from the rest of uh
The United Kingdom because it’s it is effectively within the single Market um and owing to the difficulties over um how Shar Ing and and the lack of uh the northern Irish um assembly sitting uh it’s quite complicated to work out what’s what what is in effect at any
Particular time but the default is that it’s within the single market and therefore products going from Northern Ireland but don’t come from England Scotland and where or whes will be within um seam the EU seam um one of the um yes so first of all if
You’re expor you need to look at your embedded emissions and hopefully the Importer will be able to guide you through the methodology they’re looking for you to use when they account uh to their um competent Authority um if a carbon price has been paid within the UK for example through our emissions
Trading scheme that can be taken into account um and then um the as I said the European commission um is developing its own formula um a consultation was carried out last year um on in the UK on our own seam uh tool and the conservative government has uh advised it’s proposing
To implement seam in the United Kingdom uh by 2027 um and it’s going to continue to consult have another consultation on the mechanics um of a UK seam the idea is that there will be some similarities with the EU in that it will apply a tariff effectively will be
Applied on Imports of emission intensive products based on the embedded emissions um in the Imports the UK cbam is proposed to also include Ceramics and glass which the EU seabound scheme currently doesn’t um but UK cound um is not proposing to include electricity Imports in the Sean regime um it would
Be applied to scope one and scope two um emissions uh but not scope three emissions um and there will be um a carve out of um carbon prices that have been paid in other jurisdiction so for example the European Union um one one area of difference with the
European Union is that there won’t be any mandatory product standards um proposed as part of UK seom uh the government has indicated in its response to the consultation that it would look at um voluntary product standards um but uh that’s generally not very popular amongst people who are
Planning to comply because I want everybody to comply and I have to say in 30 OD years looking at transposition of EU legislation volunt the UK’s preference for voluntary standards where that’s been proposed not generally found in much favor with those regulated um and for those of you not in
This room who are looking at uh seom and actually complying with sear we’ve just set out some suggested steps uh to say that you’re in the best possible position to be able to uh export to the European Union and comply with the UK SE when ites right that’s the end of SEO
And I’m GNA quick question on is it i’ sort of read that obviously they’re starting with the high intensity products yeah but it sounded very much like they’re going to roll it out down through the whole product supply chain so even if you’re not affected today have it on your radar for and
Presume they published some sort of sort of annex to or whatever when they’re going to do the next yeah so the benefits of EU legislation is that because you have member states multiple member states multiple languages different ways of doing things in different member states there’s always
Quite a long lead in time and the commission publishes proposals that get consulted on um and so you do have time to plan and to respond to consultations in your own country and if you’re if you are operating across jurisdictions not just within the United Kingdom Great Britain I’m sure those
Visitors that are affected with sex will be engaged I’m gonna hand over to that much more interesting directly hopefully hopefully so I’ve got rather a lot to get through but we’ll try and counter as quickly as we can um any questions do to shout um so I’m Adam Richards and I’m
Currently a sister in our planning infrastructure team at Dickson um and I’ve been more recently getting more heavily involved with sale on the environmental side of things so I’m going to cover Through the current legislative framework um I’m then also going to run onto green claims code um including green washing potentially um
And then the extended producer responsibility so starting with the legislative framework um the consumer protection from unfair trading regulations we’ll Now call the cprs um prohibit Traders from misleading consumers by falsely describing their own products product though it’s worth noting is defined very broadly um and includes Goods Services digital content
Immovable property rights and obligations and and also demands the payment uh the cprs themselves also prohibit Traders from hiding information giving sufficient information or giving information that’s unclear um in a manner for their their products or would mislead the consumer or and customer of your products the cprs cover commercial
Practices uh which would include any act emission course of conduct representation or commercial communication including advertising and marketing um I do get onto the advertising standards agency bcap and cap codes and and green claims a little bit in a moment um a Trader must not uh mislead a customer about a product in
Any way uh by giving f deceptive information about a number of specific matters um and they must also not omit important information about a product that consumer might need to make a um informed decision whether they take product a or product B if a Trader does make a false
Representation that was dishonest um and by making that representation they intend to make a game for themselves or somebody else and or cause a loss to another person then they may even commit an offense under the flaud ACT there so that’s I put that on there and it’s a
Breach of regulations and potentially a criminal offense to engage in an unfair commercial practice and so in relation to a description of a product a practice will be seen to be unfair um if it’s a misleading action as mentioned so it contains a false or misleading information and therefore is untruthful
Uh in in relation to a list of specified matters or its overall presentation or look of the product in any way deceives or is likely to deceive somebody that’s purchasing it um a misleading emission on the other hand is that you emit so you’re taking something off the product
Um that should be there that could cause or is likely to cause a consumer to take a different transactional decision when making that uh so green claims code you’ve probably seen some of these little green things on products around town um see they got 100% recyclable green tick carbon negative 100% compostable 100%
Organic there are many many more that I’m sure you’ll see around um including the famous green washing um mainly done by Airlines in this country at the moment and I think Ryan a got into trouble um for saying that they were Europe’s greenest Airline um but they
Then couldn’t back it up with any evidence so the green claims code was introduced by the competition and markets Authority H green claims are sometimes called environmental claims eco-friendly claims um basically they’re claims that show how your product uh service or brand provides a benefit or is less harmful to the environment than
Their competitors green Claims can be explicit or implicit they can appear in advertisements marketing material branding on packaging or any other information that’s provided to Consumers um just wanted to note that the international consumer protection enforcement Network a mouthful there an they do an annual sweep of websites um
Which gives consumer authorities across the world an opportunity to Target fraudulent or deceptive or unfair conduct online and and for the first time back in 2021 the L that sweep um of the internet focused on environmental claims in their entirety and as part of that sweep members analyzed almost 500
Websites um and they found that a staggering 40% of green claims that are made online could be seen as misleading Andrea Celli hopefully that’s how you say it of the CMA also said that too many websites appear to be pushing misleading claims onto consumers which means that companies that do offer
Products that are genuine environmentally beneficial um they’re not getting the customers that they deserve so for a claim to be green uh you must have one of the well all of these six things that are on the screen so first of all it has to be truthful
And accurate so for consumers to make an informed choice about what they buy the claims must be truthful accurate and a claim will be misleading if there’s any inaccuracies of impression even if the claim is factually correct businesses must live up to the environmental claims they make H claims should not imply
Things that are true if they’re not H nor should they overstate or exaggerate the impacts that they have an example here would be potentially saying that a plastic bottle is 100% recyclable When It Isn’t So if the cap isn’t recyclable you couldn’t put that on your bottle um and broader terms such as
Green sustainable or eco-friendly are much more likely to be inaccurate so before making a green claim um you should ask yourself is the claim true uh can I live up to the claims I’ve made on the product um secondly they have to be clear and unambiguous so claims should
Be worded in a way which is transparent and straightforward so that consu consumers can easily understand them in essence the meaning that the consumers are likely to take from looking at the product service or Goods vague and general statements again are probably more likely to be misleading again you ask yourself for
This question is the meaning clear to the end consumer uh if it’s vague does the explanation assist that consumer to make the decision and does it relate to the entire product um or is the information useful or just confusing thirdly you must not omit or hide important information um so what’s not
Said in a claim can also influence a consumer’s decision that they make uh customers could be misled where nothing said about an environmental impact of a product and it’s important to think about the whole life cycle of a product including where the product will eventually end up IE landfill or
Recycling so for if you’re making a comparison it must be fair and meaningful uh so if making a comparison so for example product a is better than product B for the environment which is made by product C then the comparison must be fair and meaningful product or
Service also should meet the same needs and it should be for the same purpose as product as the alternative product and it’s all about allowing the customer to make cleared informed choices um when they purchase so the question is there to ask is is is the claim comparing like for
Like um and is the comparison fair and representative uh five I’ve already touched on this but consider the full life cycle of the products um or from creation to disposal so customers as I’m sure you’re Ware are becoming more and more aware to product life cycles and impacts on the environment that they’re
Making themselves so it’s important that the information be provided where necessary um especially electronic goods and where they can be disposed of in a good manner um and then six so finally all claims however small should be backed up with robust and credible evidence which is easily accessible to
The customer and for you to be able to find out all information does not need to appear on the packaging itself um the use of QR codes you see one here um is becoming more and more common for things on like that for recycling on on products so claims they are genuine when
They properly Describe the impact they have and they’re not hiding any critical or misrepresented crucial information so enforcement um of green claims um so the competition and markets Authority the CNA are the UK’s primary competition consumer author um they share Consumer Protection Law Enforcement Powers with other bodies
Such as trading standards and and again we’ll touch on the cprs there um who are established to enforce Consumer Protection Law in relation to advertising as I said you got the bcap and cap codes so green claims are currently regulated by the sector or product specific requirements for example Energy Efficiency and
Legislation on consumer protection to CP uh the CMA in every case that they investigate will consider carefully who is the appropriate party whether that’s the manufacturer the wholesaler or the retailer of the product uh and in particular it will be the people or the persons who are best to provide address
For what has happened Consumer Protection Law covers what businesses say h how they present it and of course what they fail to say about environmental credentials of their goods Services brands or activities um we do have at the moment the digital markets competition and consumer bill passing
Through I did check today it’s now on its final reading in the House of Lords so potentially that could come as an act relatively soon um so the bill and currently passing through shows that address addressing greenwashing um in the UK is a policy priority for the
Government um and whilst the UK proposal is less ambitious um than its neighboring EU directives and if it is passed um it’s going to allow the CMA to enforce and impose fines of up to 10% of annual Global turnover for a company so some pretty big Powers there and it’s
Ail to provide the regulation of competition in digital markets um to amend the competition Act and the Enterprise act and to make other Provisions about competition law um related to protection of consumer rights and to confirm other connected purposes so that’s one to keep an eye on and trading standards have got powers
Under schedule five of the consumer rights act um and the competition and markets Authority also have powers for enforcement um I’ve po some enforcement and penalties here so I’ll just run through them quickly so many breaches trading Standards Law are criminal offenses and and they can be prosecuted in the
Magistrates or Crown Court and an successful prosecution may have a range of consequences um including a criminal record punishment or senten to an unlimited fine two years imprisonment and where business is prosecuted for fraud fraud theft or money laundering and in addition to that um or instead of
Trading standard offenses you you could get up to 14 years imprisonment and so it can be very very serious you can be ordered to pay compensation and ordered to pay costs of any investigations that the CMA want to make um and potentially confiscation of the assets or forfeiture of the goods
Themselves um you could get a simple caution or a formal warning um it’s offered as an alternative to prosecution where it’s in the public interest to do so and therefore there is no obligation on trading standards to do so but it’s at their own um decision to make and an
Enforcement order um you could apply to the court for an enforcement order where the CMA can apply to the court for an enforcement order um requiring a business to comply with the law and it may include um the order itself a breach of the order is a contempt of court
Which could carry again criminal sanctions in the fine or up to two years imprisonment um could be in order to take enhanced consumer measures including changes to business processes and paying compensation to victims an order to pay the cost of the investigation as I mentioned and and a
Requirement to publicize the order to the public uh you can be granted an undertaking so an undertaking is a formal way for a business to comply with the law and where appropriate take enhance consumer measures um or a compliance notice uh is a notice that will require the business to take action
To stop doing something um and in general there’ll be a deadline to comply with it in that compliance notice and then if you fail to do so it could lead to formal action by the CMA in the courts eprs the extended producer responsibility um it’s about making sure that businesses that manufacture import
Or sell products are responsible for the end of life envir environmental impacts not just when they’re made um so the extended producer responsibility for packaging H was updated in January this year um packaging fees will have they’ve been deferred for a year um def for environment agency will provide
An indication of these fees when they can and these will vary on the materials uh reported um in future Waste Management fees will also vary depending on the recyclability of the packaging so that easy they are to recycle the more likely the fee will be lower and the regulations will apply to
All UK organizations that import or Supply packaging um got you need to collect and Report packaging data if the following apply so they’ve got if you’re an individual business substit to a group not a charity they’re exempt um you’ve got an annual turnover of a million pound or more based on your most
Recent accounts um or you were responsible for more than 25 tons of packaging Imports in 2022 um or you carry out any packaging activities there are small business exemptions um but I did just note that that all coffee shops employing more than 10 people uh will be required to
Provide collection points for single use cups uh from 2025 and so epr and packaging what you may need to do is collect and Report data um pay waste management fee pay scheme administrator costs pay charge to an environmental regulator get packaging recycling notes or packaging waste expert recycling
Notes export sorry um and what you need to do is based on whether your classs are small or larger organization um your packaging data is to collect is packaging activity so how the packaging supplied packaging types of household and non-household uh there’s packaging classes that will be involved so primary secondary shipment
Or tertiary um and the packaging material and weight itself and so small organization um is as we mentioned an annual turnover between 1 and two million and supply for more than 25 tons of empty packaging to the UK or an annual turnover is more than a million or you import more than
25 to 50 tons and then large you’ve got annual turnover of 2 million pounds or more and You’ be responsible for supplying or importing more than 50 tons of EDS packaging um the deadlines are laid out in the regulations um you should make your best efforts to meet them so
Deadlines for reporting packaging for a small organization at the moment and you should collect your 2023 packaging data however you don’t have to report it yet um but you should also collect your 2024 data and submit that by April 2025 large organizations in England Scotland and Northern Ireland you should
Submit by the 1 of October for a report from January to June 23 and the 1 of April 24 to report for July to December 23 uh erpr packaging fees mentioned have been deferred at the moment until October 2025 and that is me any questions or anything that we’ve got our contact
Leaders I’m sure slides are going to be shared afterwards as well so thank you for your time thank you question on the packaging one yes is it I mean it’s a crystal bll question but is it likely that they’re going to drop those limits to Encompass more and more I think they
Will I think it’s going to be a bit more like the seam as well is that it will continue to try and you know capture more in the future definitely I think from working with a few businesses that that 25 tons sounds an awful lot but if
You’re shipping stuff on pallets and I you get there very quickly so and especially if you using glass get there quite quickly so it’s just another one what we tried to do with this is just sort of give you things that should be on your radar may
Not affect you now but keep keep keep your eye out as your business grows okay thank you any other questions anything online s nothing online no okay thank you very much um Sarah and Adam we’re GNA just take a quick five minute break so just recharge your copy cups
Um use the facilities and then come back and then I’m going to sort of take you through um the Practical steps of right okay how do we do a carbon footprint on our products and then I’ll also towards the end of that session link it back to
How do we then label it how do we communicate it bearing in mind what you just heard from Adam not making the mistakes and then we’re gonna yeah we’re going to continue us appear you battled the floods well done um so yeah so R doing the case study
From two drifters pulling it all together really and showing you how a business is has done this how they talk about it how they went about it so yeah quick five minute break um if you want to pick our brains during that break then then by all means so we’ll aim to
Get going again just before 20 pass we still on track yeah good good yeah just grab a coffee and then then we’ll start again in um six minutes it’s always a shame to stop the stop the it’s that it’s that sort of Fine Line do do we just
Leters I mean we we have got quite a bit of um hopefully bit spare time so so we can certainly pick up the the networking um just check from so we got no no questions or anything online all good okay so I’m going to take us through now Sly
Sort of Adam and Sarah really this is a big subject product foot printing but I’m going to try and approach it in quite a simplistic way quite a high level way but give you the tools and the framework to walk out and at least make
A make a start so um as I said we’ve worked with um B and and the N exchange and yeah really happy to be here and great to see you guys here in terms of me um as Sarah touched on I go back quite a long way environmental
Sustainability here I was chatting to a client yesterday it’s my first ever visit to a client and I was that big and I was inter doing an internal audit with the auditor with the guy that put the system in on 14,000 on1 and we worked out it was 200
2003 so 20 plus years um and in those years I mean we’re now in a totally different space if we were doing this Workshop then we probably would have had two people in the audience at best um so so yeah so my background is um manufacturing engineering from a process
Side I then had the lucky break to get away from manufacturing get into sustainability um and I always approached sustainability as that that sort of three-way thing in terms of product profit and Planet so that you can make some decisions which are going to be better for the planet better
For the climate um but you always need to make them with a commercial mindset so um so that’s sort of my approach I’ve been working with swim housee for 15 years um and it’s really good fun working SAS because almost every three or four years it’s like you get a new
Job so um two or three years ago my new job was to create um The makeing Net Zero program so um since then we’ve probably done probably an excess of 250 probably approaching 300 company carbon Footprints now um we’ve done a few product ones so so yeah hopefully uh
What I’ve learned over those years is actually keep it simple so I’ll try and keep it as simple as we can but don’t want to oversimplify it um so if we got any questions as we go through just just just far away so what we’re going to
Cover is six steps to create a footprint um and just take you through those steps nice and slowly once you’ve done your product footprint you can then go right okay I’ve got my data I’ve got my evidence um I can substantiate my claims then you can start thinking about how
You’re going to communicate it so um we can look at a couple of ways to do that and we will touch back on um labeling I’m then going to leave it at the end just touching on some useful tools that are out there that you can use um and
Leave you with some resources so some links to some databases where you can get some emissions data and then just finally touch on the sort of global standards that would cover product footprinting um so really first bit and this sort of comes back to me from my manufacturing days and everything is
Sort of before you go and design something make sure you you’re very clear on the definition so before you go off and start um trying to do a product carbon footprint just stop and make sure you’ve got the definition right there’s a great quote from Einstein he’s sort of
If he’s got a problem to solve he would spend 95% of his time defining what the problem is and then 5% solving it so it’s the same carbon footprinting for your product really be clear of why you’re starting so in terms of why are
You doing it why is it is it a legal issue so what we’re seeing the early signs of cbam is there’s something called an environmental product declaration which is a way of declaring what the embedded carbon is in your product and even though it’s way ahead of probably cound we’re seeing customers
Asking their suppliers for epds so you may want to do a carbon footprint of your product to comply with that you may want to do it from a marketing point of view as we’ll hear hopefully from from Russ of some of the benefits of of of promoting your your product as as sort
Of more sustainable um you may just want to do it because you’re interested um so think about who your audience is going to be as well because then from the outset you can decide how you’re going to structure the the carbon footprint um and then lastly think about how you’re
Going to communicate it because if you’re doing it to your own point of view and you’re not going to go public with it you don’t have to worry about all the legislation out there so you might just want do it as an interesting um internal project so make sure you’ve
Got a real clear goal for your carbon footprint before you start Adam touched on it um a little bit in presentation this this this thing called um product life cycle so when a product gets made we generally start with some more materials and in some cases those
Materials have to be extracted from the earth so we’ve got right from getting the raw materials out of the ground you then probably process them materials do something to them change change them in some way and then probably hand them to a manufacturer and then the manufacturer will pick up those
Materials start putting them together and you’ll be then starting to build your product once you’ve made your product you’ve then got to get into your hands of your customer so then you’ve got to be thinking about the embedded carbon the impact of distribution and then um I think was it
Excluded from one of the legislations the product use phas did you say or was it you touched on use didn’t you but anyway um so then you’ve got to think about um how your how are your products going to be used and there’s a really when we come on to communication there’s
A really interesting um footprint example of a teabag and it’s quite surprising when you see um and then lastly about end of life so basically what happens to your product once it’s finished it’s it’s life what happen happens to that point flipping back and sort of opening up a little bit is the
Other thing in terms of your product is try and move to what we call a circular model so that we don’t get to that end of life so that if your product has finished its phase of use can it be remanufactured can it be upgraded so
That it goes back into the loop again but um and in terms of setting the boundary so this is how you’re going to wrap your arms around that product lifestyle there’s three sort of common um boundaries that we see set the first one is called cradle to gate so
Basically you think of cradle as a sort of newborn so you’re taking some newborn materials you’re manufacturing it and then at the point of manufacturer when it gets to the gate of the factory that’s the end of a cradle gate um footprint you’ve then got second
Um Cradle gate but if you’re a retailer so you would wrap your arms around materials of manufacturing but because you’re retailing it you pick up carbon in the distribution and then the last one really if you’re making final products so if you’re making final products go straight
To a consumer you then get the term where a lot of people know it cradle the grave so that is encompassing the whole life cycle um and what we see is the complexity does get very complex when you start to go into the in use phase because you’ve really got to understand
How your product is being used by your consumer um and then end of life is also for a lot of companies really difficult so I was working with a really highend beautiful sort of furniture manufacturer they do beautiful um curved wooden products and they don’t really have a
Handle on what’s Happening to their products at the end of the life we don’t think many of get there because most people if it’s a beautiful work of art won’t just if it’s broke they won’t just bin it so so we’re having some interesting conversations with them
About the end of life so that’s the three sort of boundaries the common boundaries of of setting a product footprint Co is there other one I’ve heard of cradle for cradle so that kind of incorporating that circularity so kind of BuyBacks and yeah so yeah it’s a good point actually is C
Grade will be the one where you’re encompassing that circular model so that you’re you’re looking after that product from its birth back to its rebirth almost yeah thank you um then what you got to do is sort of Define the scope of your um product footprint activity so this is thinking
About how far are you going to go in geography so are you just going to limit it to within the UK you’re going to do it within the U EU you you’re going to have to go for Global um what sort of time frame are you going to um pick most
Of the time it’s sort of um if you’re doing a company carbon footprint is typically a year but for a product Caron footprint it may be longer because of the the whole life cycle um are you going to set some exclusions straight away so typically you can you can
Exclude things if they’re going to be very complicated to find the data or um maybe the data just doesn’t exist quite often companies have to make assumptions so what you need to do is making sure you’re documenting this because if you’re then going to claim on your
Product you need to be about to back it up so if you’ve got a clear defined scope where you’ve made some assumptions you’ve set some exclusions nobody can point fig out then start to think about sort data requirements and we’re gonna we’re going to just spend a little bit
More time on data requirements because it’s the big chunk of of doing a product footprint and then we’re also going to touch on something called allocation so some bits of data you’re not going to have 100% of all that emission you may have to allocate it either with another
Customer or another manufacturer so we’re just going to talk about how that works um you’ve then got these two terms really it’s sort of like you need to be doing the carbon footprint based on a thing so a thing can either be what’s called a declared unit so that’s the
Easier one so that’s something very tangible it could be carbon per kilogram product could be carbon per meter squar of a carpet T could be carbon per distance traveled but that’s a tangible unit of measure that’s very very clear um the functional unit is a little bit
Um I struggled with it as start but but sort of basically it’s a it’s for a final product so you’re thinking about a function so it would be a carbon footprint of a car carbon footprint of a vacuum F so it’s the whole thing rather
Than a carbon footprint of 5 kgs of vum CA it’s it’s the entirety of it so um so that’s the two sort of um terminologies to to be thinking about how you’re going to approach it so I’m just picking on Ian essential oils probably going to be
Volume related so um run probably volume again um functional unit functional unit B yeah say so so yeah so it’s just making that decision points you’re very clear about what you’re doing then you need to build what call the call the data inventory so this is your list of all the
Things of where there are emissions from your product so so you need to be thinking right from the word go the type of data so you can have have site specific so in my factory I can measure things I can record things um if you can’t measure and record them straight
Away you then may move to what we call secondary data so that sort of might be something on an invoice so pounds weight you’ve bought some but you haven’t physically measured it so primary is your physically gather it Gathering it secondary you’ve got it from a secondary source and then you can
Get something prox so this is where you’re using average data that’s the basic some normally from an academic facility so someone’s worked out the average carbon in that in that thing so that’s your sort of three main types of data then got to think about where
You’re going to get the data from so you end up this inventory is like a table so what is the data where you going to get the data from is it going to be from accounts it’s going to be from purchasing Logistics Department be really clear about your unit of measure
So that because you’re going to be doing calcul ction later on so if we don’t not clear on the unit measure your calculations are going to be wildly out I had a client with back the other day um transferring Millions into thousands and their footprint was like well literally a million times
Bigger than it should have been so um data quality so we’re going to talk about that in a little bit more but basically thinking about okay not every time you’re going to be able to get primary data so just think about the data you’ve got how how good
Is it how reliable is it how repeatable is it um is it technologically sort of sound is it from the right time frame and is it from the right geographic area so when you start thinking about logistics there’ll be emissions data for UK Logistics there’ll be emissions data
From EU countries there’ll be um world emissions data so you just need to think about your Geographic nature of your data and then it’s really important I mean I come from a manufacturing from a lean background so continual Improvement is a big thing of of lean manufacturing with your product car foot
In your first pass is probably not going to be perfect so in in your data inventory just think about how you might improve that data element for the next year so um reason why this is all coming slipping off the tong is we’ve got kush in the audience who’s who’s joined swim
As as our knowledge transfer um partner and he’s working for the University with us on a two-year program doing scope three framework tools but also product carbon footprinting so um so kuros helped me pull the slides together and everything and it’s yeah it’s really interesting his early work on scope 3
There’s a big area around data quality because that’s where we see um a lot of companies making some some difficult decisions and quite Sometimes some wrong decisions so once you’ve you’ve got your data inventory then it’s the fun B if you’re an accountant or if you’re if you’re minded that
Way I I couldn’t do with it so basically you’re just going to now go down your data of inventry and go collect that data go find it so um but hopefully now because your inventory’s puted you in the right place you know the unit measure and you know where you you get
It from it should be it should be fairly fairly simple but it will take an awful long time I think it’d be interesting to see what Russ says about how how long it took them to do it but um yeah also bear in mind if you’re then talking to your
Supply chain you’ve got another dimension at time and complexity but but don’t be put off by it just just follow your your data inventory we said about sort of data collection and quality really this is a a good sort of rule of thumb really the sort of lowest of the low is an
Approximated appr proxy data Times by a um sort of an emissions Factor the next sort of tick up would be something measured but you’ll then still use an assumed um uh consumption rate and the emission Factor next one up is you’ve actually measured it’ve done some sampling next one up is you’ve actually
Physically measured it and then the last one is You’ you’ve sort you’ve you’ve you’ve really taken that measurement precisely um so so think about that as you’re as you’re doing your your product foot print keeping up with me we all right and then in terms of data quality
Because it’s you’ve probably heard the term garbage in garbage out so if you don’t get the data PL the whole Footprints flored anyway so in terms of data quality this is the other areas you should be thinking about it is sort of like is it clean data so are there any
Errors in it um is it all complete so on your inventory You’ got every single line item or you got some missing um is it comprehensive um is it what you chose at the start and is there anything confusing about it so basically what you’re doing is after you’ve gathered
The data you’re going to use this sort of decision tree to go back down your inventory and just sort of just cross check it really um and just make sure that it’s sort of credible as we heard it’s got you may be asked to produce it
So it’s got to sort of stand up in hopefully not caught but um if you if you’re ask back so then you’ve then got all your data so youve got all your units and measure you know how many things that you’ve got on the data inventure we’ve now got to turn
That into carbon because that’s the whole point of this is is turning into a product carbon footprint so you’ve then got to go off and find the emissions Factor so a kilo of aluminum would equal so many kilos of car carbon kilo of um gold will have a different mechanism of
Different emissions Factor so so there are um publicly available emissions databases but there are also commercial ones as well and so we’re going to give you one example of a commercial company who they’ve got access to I think something like 50 different databases so they can accelerate your product carbon
Footprint quite quick but obviously you’re paying a commercial fee for that so so these are two quite um common ones you’ve got the efb one and then you’ve got the the good old UK um government one which will come from the ghg being gas protocol database so so yeah find your
Data and then so yeah just on that so then what you’ve got you add that to the end of your column and then you can start doing the maths so basically now going to going to start Computing carbon but not everything that you compute
You won’t have it as an entirety so so a good example of allocation would be you’re trying to work out the logistics of this how this mouse pointer got to um PC World it came on a dpd lry but on that lry was another 200 packages so of
The one ton of carbon that that Lorry consumed right tring around the UK how much do I allocate for my mouse so so if you’re going to do allocations basically put it in red you want to avoid it wherever possible because it’s sort of it’s it’s it’s
Prone to quite large errors so so basically if you’re going to do it you need to be thinking about what the method is um so you might do it dpd example you might do it on weight would be a good one to do with Logistics um quite common you do it on
The amount you buy so if if you’re talking to a supplier and it’s a bit vague what the total carbon footprint of the materials you buy or the products you buy from them another allocation method would be I spend a million pound with you a year you’re a 10 million
Pound business therefore I will take 10% of your overall emissions and roll that into my product so that would be another way of um doing missions allocation um but make sure it’s sort of relevant so cost is relevant weight is relevant um sometimes it’s time things
Like that but but be wary on on using um allocations unless you really have to then what you want to do is don’t just press the button and then tell the world you need to basically cross check cross check your figures so so really go back through it with the fine tooth cone
Checking your data checking there’s no anomalies um so I had a client yesterday and they were doing the company carbon footprint and they were 3 years in so they said oh can you update our report and I said yes of course can you send me
Your data for 22 23 and your data for 23 24 yes here here you are I put it all in and it’s really interesting the carbon was just a flat line from and I was like that’s really strange so then I looked at the data and it was identical to the
First year they’ve given me so I got in contact with the client and bless her she said well there’s nothing changed from the company so the electricity got be the same and the gas and the fuel so so they just made an assumption that nothing had changed in the business therefore the
Data is all the same so you can’t do that you have to basically check it’s it’s valid once you’ve done your data quite often you can start drawing some conclusions so when you do your footprint and you look at this big long inventory there’s going to be two or
Three things that have got the lon share of your carbon I know Ross is gonna GNA illustrate that bang on in a bit um so so already you can see where your carbon hotspots are in your product so use that data to draw some conclusions and then make some
Recommendations really so so if you’re doing this and it’s the same as if you’re doing a company carbon footprint I don’t think you should have product footprint and just go it’s 10 tons per kilo or it’s 10 tons per phone it’s about what you’re going to do to reduce
That because otherwise if we just measure it and do nothing you not really gained a lot so so make sure that you can pull some conclusions out and then make some recommendations and then it’s time to share the results in a legally compliant way of course so um two examples sorry
The image on the right is a bit fuzzy so this is I said we would sort talk about some of the commercial products so this is a product called One Click LCA and they’ve honed in on lots of businesses need to do product carbon Footprints so they’ve built an IT
Platform to basically do it very quick they’ve got access to a whole host of databases this is another company Petes so I don’t know if it’s clear enough from the back but in terms of the product footprint of the product where’s the biggest emissions use B yes so because to make a
Cup of tea you got to boil a cow so interesting now their packaging informs the consumer only enough water for your cup of tea um so they theyve they they they they can’t do much about that you can’t make tea with cold water but they’re now sort of informing the
Consumer of what they can do um I like Pea’s way of doing it because that’s very engaging I want to read that I want to get involved that’s okay there nice imagery um but there’s some pretty bad examples of communicating it to customers out there then we said about labeling so
Um there is a lot of different labeling schemes out there um probably the most common one and the one that’s got most traction is from the carbon trust um so that’s what I’m seeing quite often it’s really sad this sort of job you and hopefully we’ll do it now because I’ve
Told you when you’re next in the supermarket start turning the products over and you’ll see some of these labels on the back so um so that’s two examples of carbon label so this is where you need to be sure it’s very clear very evidence-based so they’re telling you
What what the actual carbon is in that t-shirt um and each part this life phase which is quite nice um as I said there’s loads of different carbal labeling going on and it’s I think this is where the greens claim code sort of had to step in because
Because people are just saying all sorts um and misleading consumers um so yeah so choose your I think choose your own if you’re going to going to use labeling choose your your labeling scheme wisely and make sure it’s it’s valid I then said I’d finish off I think
For time I was going to finish off talking just give you some resources and tools so these slides are going up by PDF aren’t they so yeah so all the hyperlinks should work so in terms of the tools this is just a small SL ction they could have been slide after slide
After slide so you’ve got one click ey LCA on Berto um carbon footprint.com they were fairly early early sort of pioneers and they got a lot of great tools out there if you’re really Brave the greenhouse gas protocol website is a great source of resource but um you’ve
Got to youve got to be prepared to understand it way through it um but it’s free and it’s it’s kept up to date every single year so and then you’ve got a whole host of um product carbon calculators starting to aage so and then hopefully if Kush does well in continues
Well 18 months probably we should have a swim ass carbon foot tool fairly sure um and then emissions databases so this is where you get your your magical emissions figures so you’ve got um the gxg G greenhouse gas protocol they do life cycle databases and they’re very thorough you’ve got then the
Ipcc they do another um database and then there’s another um one through open LCA um and also if you do if you’re lucky enough to be working with an academic facility I think most academic facilities have got extended databases themselves so so last bit really is and this is
Just this is just either your choice or you may be forced to to choose a a globally recognized standard so so there are two um standards that that are out there so there’s the iso standard 467 and you’ve then got the Pas 2050 standard so depending on remember we
Going right back to the goal rending why we’re doing this if it’s to um sort of tell a customer what they need to know they may ask you to do it to an accredited um standards so these standards mean you can go and get a third party auditor to check your work
Against the name standard and then put s it on the wall and on your product and it will hold all its um all its all its um weight in court if if you ever got that far so so that is where I was going to finish obviously that was probably
About half an hour on a very complicated um subject but I want to make sure that the more and more than than enough time for Russ because that I think will bring it all together and and bring it to life so any questions it won’t be the data collected for example with
Essential oils yeah you wanted to get what the carbon cost of ser a liter of lavender oil yeah and the production that is that something you could just get off a company or the net or do you have to actually calculate that for something like essential walls from lavender would
Be very specialist so I doubt that would be on any emissions database so and then the second part that question if it was there for example most of the comes from Bulgaria so it would be based on their processing ours is far more efficient so
Should we do our own and that’s why it comes back to that Geographic point so if you’re doing it on your product I would suggest you probably do it on your processes and UK figures um so so bit I didn’t cover was when you’re trying to
Do this it’s really good to get a process map drawn out of your the process that your product goes through and and its creation because then you can really understand the steps so I think you’re going to probably have to do it yourself um unfortunately there’ll be some there’ll be some emissions
Yeah really was just how reliable was if it was there how reliable was it and should we we see the data we see this even with company carbon Footprints so if you are trying to work out carbon associated with the electricity you’ve got two emission factors one is for 100% green the other
Emission factor is for what they call Brown or standard energy standard electricity but each energy supplier supplies different fuel mixes so even that is a bit misleading in some instances so I think you just have to get what you can document what you got document any assumptions and and just
Improve it as you can any more before I pass on to do you want an introduction r or you going to introduce yourself good a big thank you to Russ a bit of a challenging trip as the P Rush on the trains because we’re here talking about carbon and today we’ve got the
Impact climate change with floods causing a mayem on the transport Network so so thank you yes some yep I’m Russ yes I battled the floods and got here this has been a great setup and it’s very rare that I get to give a talk where the legal aspects and got
Worried about what we do whether it’s right and then someone explain exactly how you do a carbon footprint and a lifecycle assessment so that some of my slides can gloss over because you covered large parts of it so that’s great that very rarely happens um I am
One of the two drifters so we’re husband and wife team my wife is of course the other Drifter Gemma um and we are a rum Distillery we produced rum from scratch in exter just by exter airport and and uh I want to tell you a bit about the
Rum what we make I’m sorry I brought no samples on the TR just cover that off but uh yeah I want to talk about that and also a little bit about our carbon footprint of course and how we achieve a carbon negative run in the first place
So who are we well yeah like I said g and I uh both set up two drifters back in 2019 maybe seven months before the pandemic which has been obviously an interesting challenge in the hospitality world um but you know we’re still here five years on nearly um we have a a brewery
Set up so our our warehouse that we have by extra airport is kind of an aircraft hanger shape um stupid building pointed roof sloped walls no one wanted it so we were very happy to move in there but we bought a brewery on the basis that we’ve
Never made r four so Jemma’s background is medical sales she was a medical sales rep and my background is chemistry so uh my research I’ll come on to when we talk about the carbon stuff was but it was involved mainly in carbon capture carbon storage and trying to turn CO2 into
Anything of value but I was an organic chemist so distilling was kind of the day job this is just a much bigger scale way of distilling so we both uh sold our house uh invested in the business all the money into the business so it was
All cards in moved back to Devon because we were in Swansea at the time doing doing a fellowship there uh and we thought right we’re going to make rum but never made rum before we have made beer we should probably hedge our bets and have a brewery and a little
Rum Distillery on the side so we can get this better at making it uh that lasted maybe three months of making beer then we quickly converted all of the brewery equipment to make as much rum as possible we went from an initial 80 bottles of rum a week we could produced
To now we’ve got our fully converted Brey and I say fully converted this is just a kettle uh with a cob of condenser on top that is the level of conversion that’s required um but that took us to 2 and a half thousand bottles a week so that’s kind of where we
Sit here’s a better picture of The Distillery so this is all the shiny stainless steel equipment um and these are our fermenters um we ferment molasses we then distill it twice and a third time for our white rum and we produce all of our products uh in this
You can see the city slope roof here uh and the cuper condenser that sits just just on top of here and then the second distillation takes place on our um smaller you know this sort of size um Stills which are uh copper tops they’re all stainless steel and they’re all fully
Electric okay the run very important glad you mentioned that earlier that uh it’s not just about the carbon footprint it very much has to have a commercial spin is the most important thing and I always talk about it first is the rum the rum is the most important thing that
We do right without it there is no business and having a carbon negative footprint and all the other work that I’m going to talk about is irrelevant if you have a crack product you have to have something people want to come back and buy and drink and enjoy uh in order
To make it work so most importantly here is our rum we produced four different varieties the white rum is our Flagship product white rum is a very difficult thing to sell to people because it has cheap nasty conations pain stripper I hear all sorts of things
But it’s the very hardest to get right as a rum distiller because white rum has nothing but water added and you are completely exposed to the process of producing it which means a good white rum means a good Distillery right it’s the best one to bench Market to you can
Cover up all multitude of sins with spices cks anything else but to have a nice pure white rum you’ve just added water to that’s tough so the white rum is is it’s the best you not allowed a favorite child but it’s ours um then we
Produce we we take some of our rum and put it into ex madira cks so empty with madira gives a lovely burnt orange quality to the to the rum nice 12 months aging uh and that’s our signature rum and then we have our two spiced drums so
A lightly spiced drum these these three are all 40% ad it’s lightly spiced with uh mix of spices that sits on Star and E FL flow has a very nice quality that goes very well with ginger beer the final rum is our overproof spiced pineapple this is our expression of fun
Over proof slip off little at 60% avv very strong Punchy this is the only one we add sugar to so it’s a nice sweet full I mean it’s a full-on taste it’s uh it’s needs to be tried here it is as a uh a vegan peanut Gada made with oat milk absolutely
Delicious quality speaks for itself you know I’m going to talk a little bit about how we’ve been uh awarded we’ve won few awards for the quality of our run but uh yeah great taste two stars for the pineapple was a nice Accolade for us to pick up rums a really
Interesting category uh the UK is actually the third biggest rum consumer in the world um sitting behind the US and India and uh that means we’re in a great exciting environment uh where we can sell lots of products hopefully half of that rum is bai so there’s a lot of
Market share to try and steal and rum is always thought of as a cheap Spirit um it is always pushed on price rather than and volume rather than quality so um there is a big opportunity for the premiumization that has been seen in other Spirits categories so why it’s an
Interesting space to be in this is more of an investor slide than for you guys but these are some of our partners so uh the latest ones and the big highlights on here certainly when we’re thinking about carbon footprint is and use phase particularly is our Airline and the
EasyJet one is actually not announced yet so I know you’re sharing the slides but 20th of March we go live with easy Jeff we’ve been with richways for a year so our rum is the miniature uh on British Airways it’s the signature one the one in the cks EasyJet
Are choosing the white rum as a premium offering versus lucardi it’s a big statement for us and a big master these are the other kind of uh it’s interesting to see and last thing I’ll highlight is that these are guilty industries that we sell to right so if you have a carbon intensive
Industry steak restaurant Airlines they do everything they can to try and reduce their footprint in other areas and so choosing us is a natural thing um okay the airline one is a really interesting one and one I’m going to hone in on because it relates to our life cycle
Assessment but also how package things up these are the latest developments so the Miniatures are aluminium so very much lightweight and I’ll come on to a lot of that but it has a big impact on your use phase when you’re thinking about flying your product around okay why we’re here why carbon
Negative what is carbon negative um why go that far uh can you claim it is it legal we have to think about what we just heard a life cycle assessment my slide of course is circular because we like to think that is achievable at some point although very difficult in lots of
Areas but it’s exactly the same thing we just saw in the last talk so moving from raw materials and the Cradle right the way through to the Grave or back to the Cradle again and you have to think about what’s the impact of producing rum and
Who drinks it and where it’s drunk how it’s drunk uh and also how it gets to people so yeah we have the same approach you just store in terms of the CO2 emissions tied up in making the rum we’ve got to think on uh the level of
Detail now I know that you understand the process because we’ve just seen the same talk but uh the sugar is an excellent one to focus in on using that kind of understanding of the geography of where things come from and also the processes and how we uh take it to to
Kind of the next level in terms of the drinks industry right so we are the first producer to publish an epd on a drinks uh product right so we have an epd published on our website please have a look um it’s very long very detailed but does contain lots of Snippets of
Goodness but if we think about the sugar and its process and how it gets to us and all the things that are tied up because you may be thinking why did he choose rum in the UK when plenty of people in the Caribbean near where the Sugar’s produced uh you know they they
Produced very good quality product and it’s kind of a deliberate act you’ll see how we’ve set up the business model to think about the car footprint that we’ve caused uh and how that ties in but rum is for two reasons one is it’s difficult to have f with carbon negative product
Um especially when you’re producing in the UK and sugar does not grow anywhere near here second G and I absolutely love rum so it was always going to be that way our first date was rum tasting we went to St LU on our honeymoon it’s been a constant problem theme through our
Marriage so here we are sugar OB starts in the sugarcane plantations you’ve got all the emissions associated with your fertilizer your pesticides your seed production the farm machinery that’s running around is burning diesel the whole time you know you’ve got all of that then you’ve got to harvest your
Cane and produce your raw sugar which is a Milling process very energy intensive all of those emissions have started right and our assumption on geography it’s the very worst we take the worst um scenario and we say right it’s gone it’s come from Brazil this is as bad we think
We can get it all we know from our actual supply chain is that the Molasses comes from either Algeria or Morocco and then trying to find out where that actual molasses because molasses is of course a waste byproduct of processing the sugar so you don’t know where the
Sugar grew in the first place when you’re just buying this product here in the UK so we buy it from portbury in Bristol um tracing that back through it’s a murky world of sugar they they don’t want to give up much information so therefore we make the worst case
Assumption so that Sugar can we assume grows in Brazil and our data is based on all of that then you’ve got your transportation okay so it’s in Brazil it’s gone from Plantation to Mill uh it’s gone from the mill where it’s uh it’s turned into that raw sugar uh by C
To the refinery the refinery is where it’ll be turned into a nice white granulated sugar that’s the you know the prize commodity and the waste left over that’s the Molasses which is what we like I said that Refinery is in Algeria or Morocco so pick the furthest we’ll go
For Algeria from Brazil and we’ll say right that’s where our Refinery is and then we use the data for that to say right this is this is how the refining process taking place you got a big sea journey across there’s a lot of emissions tied up there then it gets uh
Refined and obviously the Molasses then put on a boat and comes to uh it comes to the UK P like I said where huge shipments of molasses are brought in molasses is almost exclusively brought to the UK as cattle feed right so it’s here predominantly to feed dairy cows we
Buy it by the five tons and so the final part of the journey in terms of the Molasses is to come down the M5 uh in a big lorry and then he just pumps it straight into our containers in The Distillery and so before we’ve even
Produced a single bottle of rum all of that impact has been caused right so that’s we’re responsible for it hence while we includ the refining obviously we’re worried about the energy and all the water use that boat journey is a an enormous contribution that is a big big
Hot spot and if I could command enough sales of rum bottles to Commander a sailing vessel to bring it by sail across I would um but it’s just not possible pricewise so that’s what we are uh the Molasses this is the sort of Lorry that they bring down um and he
Just pumps it into the Distillery okay so it’s arrived at The Distillery we’ve now got to turn that molasses into uh our rum and the first part of that process is the fermentation so here you’ve got an opportunity to try and capture some of the carbon and so one of
The experiments that we’ve been trying to do uh and I have been kind of succeeding is to take the CO2 from the fermentation sou I I’m assuming some knowledge of fermentation but basically sugar gets chopped up into ethanol and CO2 gets released as a byproduct right that’s kind of an oversimplified version
But that’s what you get that CO2 that comes out is what the plant took in to grow right so it’s a it’s a neutral process so if you can capture any of the CO2 that comes off from the fermentation you’ve got an easy win if you can put it
Into something else and if you can parently store it underground you could achieve negativity just from doing that what we trying to do at the moment through some experiments is just to to enhance the growth of strawberries in a kind of hydroponic setup uh that basically you can get 30% more
Strawberries if you feed at the right level of CO2 right so there an extra use of V CO2 so just a little side bit and there are other things you could do algae is the bigger play uh and growing protein spiruline I say from our waste CO2 from the fermenters would be a
Really interesting step but it’s expensive okay then the final step for us in terms of the molasses and the sugar journey is to transport the waste out to a farmer and actually had a really interesting guy come and visit me on Monday who has black soldier flies and what he does is
They feed off waste and they are the biggest bioaccumulators I’ve never heard all of this where they basically can eat what was the stat he gave a kilo of fly lari right in in a load of way waste will turn into five and a half tons of maggots and then those five love
So those 5 and a half tons are then blitzed into protein and that protein is added to pet food and it’s a supplement also for um fish farming right so instead of grinding up fish you can use these maggots to do it but it goes from
A kilo consumes all of our waste and produces five and a half tons of in mindblowing that kind of level of Bio accumulation so it’s another thing you can do for now we’ve takeen to the farmer and he fees it to his cattle so really all we’ve done is by cattle feed
Sneak out rum and produce cattle feed okay the electric distillery so this is critical to what we can achieve those are all the things I can’t do anything about our sugar Journey right I can’t influence it I told you our scale of commercials sales or rate of sales is
Not enough for me to command a sailing vessel things I can control is the fully electric distillery and to choose to use SS’s green tariff in order to produce very very low emissions just a transmission uh in terms of the production of our our product so we can
Control that other things we do around The Distillery are electric vehicles that we do the local deliveries in and dpd is a good example They smash loads and loads of bottles but you know we still stick with them because they’re carbon neutral commitment is better than
Most um so we live with that but these are things that we can do in terms of getting it to the consumer and so on there are lots of things I can’t do anything about one of which is if we send pallets somewhere there is no dbd equivalent with carbon neutral committed
AER presumably because it just cost too much so we have to think about what we’re going to do about it so what you going to do about the carbon you haven’t got well back to my chemistry days uh I worked in this carbon catcher environment nice picture of carbon
Catcher if only it was so simple um why is it difficult to capture carbon directly so direct air capture is the bit that really excites me why is it difficult well uh of the air atmospheric compostion and there is a test left that I hope you’re all making notes see
Enough writing but anyway the the carbon dioxide is a large part of the trace gases it’s actually only 400 parts per million which is a lot compared to what we used to have as a planet but it’s still very very small so it’s a bit like
Trying to grab one drop from an olympic size swimming pool that’s the kind of challenge you’ve got of capturing carbon so that’s why it’s difficult how we do it well we work with a partner that’s uh that has a direct air capture technology so uh clim Works they’re
They’re a Swiss company they’re based in uh in Zurich but the plant itself so these direct air capture machines you know they look a little bit like air conditioning units but they’re not they are essentially sucking CO2 straight out of the atmosphere so what happens is the
Air passes through and all the CO2 gets stuck on the filter and CO2 free air comes out the other side so that what direct air capture is this offers a way to remove the CO2 you can’t avoid right so then the challenge becomes calculate all of the CO2 emissions tied up in
Producing a bottle of your product hence the functional unit and say right we’re going to suck out all of the CO2 uh that we can’t avoid as well as all the stuff uh everything tied up in the body so the full life cycle of the product um this little bit is just to
Show the difference in terms of impact the direct air capture has versus other Technologies now the critical thing uh that relates to what we’re talking about here is the verifiable nature of the carbon removal so here we have a process that captures CO2 it then goes through a
Secondary process which is called by a company called carb fix where it’s injected back underground and solidified as in in volcanic rock so in bassal rock it solidifies and is permanently locked away right so so just injected in gone mineralized takes about 18 months for that process to
Happen so what you have here is a way of sucking CO2 from the atmosphere and permanently storing it underground and it’s measurable and it’s third party verified and you can quantify it exactly so you can say right there’s that many grams of bassal rock that’s now
Solidified and I want that many grams of CO2 removed that’s how it works then the challenge is of course to verify your calculation your life cycle ass M and to say and to make a balance work and that’s been the challenge uh as a distiller we have removed uh carbon
Dioxide with in this plant so this they’re based in Iceland like I said the reason it’s in Iceland is you have the geothermal energy and the large abundance of heat that’s required for the phase of capturing the CO2 happens on essentially a sponge and the way to
Squeeze out the sponge is to heat it up if you have to use fossil fuels to heat it up then why did you do it in the first first place so the geothermal energy offers a way also offers a way back down into the Bassel Rock because that’s where the geothermal energy comes
From and so they just have a pipe that goes the other way injecting it on the ground so that’s how the carbon removal side works then we’ve got to think about right now we know exactly how much CO2 we’ve caused and how much uh carbon we
Need to remove and we’ve got climax who can do it why doesn’t everyone do that it’s a very good question it’s exceed expensive clim technology I mean just look at it right this doesn’t look like a cheap operation I showed you how hard it was to capture carbon uh in that way
So it’s it’s really not a very simple process at all and the price we were talking about the uh the European system it’s uh the Tariff is around 80 Euros a ton um for CO2 you know moves all the time but it’s around there the price to
Remove it with clim works is a th000 EUR a ton right so there’s no real business incentive to do it it doesn’t make sense at all we price it into to our products and so we think of it as a built-in carbon tax that says right you commit to
Removing the carbon that you can’t avoid how are you going to avoid it so you don’t have to pay so much and there it drives us to work very hard to reduce the carbon footprint as much as possible what’s the least carbon intensive version here that’s not damaging the
Planet just for the sake of it so I’ve got a couple of examples I want to Rattle through because I’ve got no idea how I’m doing the time but um it’s easy loads of questions so uh on the glass bottles glass bottles are maybe a third of the contribution of the
Carbon footprint of the entire product right and another third is the sugar so that’s why I use it as an example but in terms of glass bottles uh when you start uh a rum Distillery if you’re ever thinking about it you you probably think you need heavy really nice solid bottles
That make you feel like you’re buying something premium you know we charge 35 P of bottle so it’s not a cheap product you don’t just grab it off the shelf and you you think yeah this great so you start thinking yeah let’s have a nice heavy bottle nice thick bottom glass
It’s obviously stupid in hindsight but hindsight is very easy these are our old bottles here they were 744 gram of gloves right nothing in it just 744 G of gloves they were produced in Italy we discovered following the path of where they came from that they go from Italy
To Slovenia Slovenia to France France to the UK Center of distribution out to customs right that’s the path you glass tapes and then you’re shipping 744 G all of that distance for what reason is there a better way so you can you can find out the carbon equivalence uh of
What the glass manufacturing is based on Italian glass very well covered off in terms of data and the transport we used exactly that the um UK greenhouse gas uh conversion rates and that tell you exactly what the emissions are for an average l so there you can work out the
Emissions of 862 grams of CO2 just to get that bottle to the distillery that’s quite a lot so first option is to reduce the weight of the glass so when we rebranded in 2021 we uh we were like right let’s think and the the brief to The Branding guys
Was how can we make it more sustainable and look awesome and you know sell loads and loads of products because that’s what we want to do dominate the world with run and they kind of had the brief of okay well let’s make it look pretty which they did I think they did a
Wonderful job um but also these are very bartender friendly they’re nice tall bottles they fit in people’s uh speed rails you know quick pouring that’s what bars care about big big volume bars care about but also they reduce the weight so from 7444 grams down to 520 and then we
Found a UK manufacturer that could bring it on one lry from the Glass Factory it leads straight to the Distillery right mileage down as well so then you can see the impact right the transport is massive uh and then the overall impact takes us down to
49 so a reduction in the bottle you know nearly 50% Chang and then the transport is even bigger and obviously the total reduction around 50% of the CO2 emissions that’s how we approach it that’s an easy win we got a better looking bottle it’s less distance and it’s less
Glass now flick across to the aluminium bottles I I put up earlier so the aluminium bottles I was talking about are brand new to the market right no one else produces these uh and certainly not Airlines and EasyJet have jumped on it and it’s the reason we got the contract
With them EasyJet is an airline that I had no idea that their customer they consider their customer is like a weit shopper right in terms of the airline market and then they I think Ryan Air sits with kind of your Aldi shoper that’s how the airline Market thinks
About things which means Ryan Air is probably never going to be a two Drifter customer but EasyJet are we’re also targeting weight TR um so the aluminium side of it is about reducing the weight right but let’s think about the carbon footprint these ones this particular uh
Miniature these are the ones on bri at the moment so here it’s the same glass manufacturer in leads uh so the distance is the same but the gramage per bottle 85 gram um for a glass bottle miniature and it’s 132 grams of CO2 per miniature it’s big it’s big carbon footprint right
It’s heavy gloves aluminium bottle weighs only 10 G right so the weight of the actual aluminium is dramatically less however in order to get post consumer recycled aluminium which is what we hope we have I have not verified that so explain that in a sec it comes from
Germany and so the distance traveled is much greater then comes the difficult bit about aluminium so aluminium uh we make the assumption that it’s virgin aluminium that we’re using it’s difficult to assume anything else because 100% recycled aluminium has a mixed definition even in the EU at the
Moment in that you can make take your virgin aluminium make a bottle and a load of off Cuts here can be collected up and classed as recycled aluminium because that was recycled from but really that’s just more virgin aluminium is being used in its carbon footprint so there’s an ongoing debate about
Aluminium recycling there and so because of that uncertainty we’ll put the worst case scenario in for now until we know better but that means that you’ve got virgin aluminium which is horrendous if you look at the difference bear in mind the weight right the difference in footprint of aluminium is is uh versus
Glass is massive and the transport is less because it’s Li even though it travels F further distance so although you get a reduction in transport because of that you get a big difference in the bottle and so actually the emissions increase switching from glass to aluminium a little bit surprising right
You would think this 10 G little aluminium bottle should be genius but not yet what about the use phase though we include the use phase in our carbon footprint so we’ve really got to consider it and on airplane if you’re flying a bottle around you know we make
The Assumption we have three bottles on every plane that goes so is contract that’s 600 planes because we cover just the European ones for the EasyJet one we have a trial going on which just 30 planes right so a lot less to to calculate for this year
If we roll out which I really hope we do once we’re at massive success and everyone who’s flying EasyJet this year should be buying two drifters if that all goes ahead then we roll out 170 planes we got to reassess so that iteration you’re talking about
Is always it’s ongoing we do it annually so we recalculate every year okay so the use phase well we know that the weight of the glass bottle is much heavier than the weight of the aluminum we also know that the manufacturing gives us this so we know the footprint is that but a
Short Hall flight per ton kilometer traveled which is how you work out short Hall flights and we know we’re only in the EU so that’s all we’re doing short is 20 252 gram of CO2 for every ton you carry one kilm not very far um the CO2 emissions
For the aluminum bottle is then this ridiculously small number and the CO2 emissions for a glass bottle is an equally ridiculously small number that doesn’t mean very much so on an e so when I put this data up I was giving a talk in Pisa because I we were launching
In Italy which is why it’s you Bristal to Pisa or London to Pizza sorry but basically the reduction from switching glass to uh from glass to aluminium when you’re on the use phase when you’re flying it because of the weight reduction is 89% so even though it’s a
Bit more to make it it’s worth it in the use phase because you’re flying around all the time and actually that’s a much bigger impact for that particular product now the thing I don’t like about aluminium bottles and the reason why we wouldn’t switch to it on land or on
Areas where we can decarbonize the transport is it has a plastic liner every single aluminum can has a plastic liner and always your products touching plastic and that is just isn’t ideal so it’s something we would rather move away from but here hard to decarbonize aircraft more essential to reduce your
Carbon footprint and you know it’s it’s like kilos of CO2 that you can say per person that they’re saving you know if they weren’t on that plane so it’s it’s a huge impact it has and if you drink our rum versus another you save a lot of
SE too especially if you up in the air so just bear that in mind any the other things we think about the rest of the package and I I promise I’m coming to the end now uh is the is the rest of it you know the sustainable natural cork so it’s Portuguese pork
Cork with a wooden top um you have compostible tamper seal on our bottles so it looks like plastic but it’s actually cellulos um the glass bottle is of course lightweight and British the paper is made from that Milling process so the leftover from the Milling of the
Sugar that’s what the labels are printed on uh and then of course you have our carbon negative rum inside uh that’s absolutely delicious look good do good and as a Distillery we have so far paid clim Works to remove 35.9 32 tons of CO2 much much much more importantly we’ve
Avoided 171 tons through all of our actions at The Distillery there’s loads of stuff I didn’t cover off but um lots of little things that you do throughout your entire process bring down the footprint quite dramatically so therefore it’s feel good run and that’s me happy to sa any questions excent any questions
Presume that there’s a commercial Advantage as well with the aluminium because if D aircraft operat weight must be key so big yeah big difference but there’s also nothing to stop the other guys sticking their product into it so for now we have the advantage because we you know early adopters it but
Yeah the rest will catch up I’m sure and then how do you how do you convey this to the to the consumer it’s so pick it off the shelf in weit tros in a year’s time or whatever is it on the back of the bottle
Is it uh so on the bottle itself um I wonder if you can see any of the details so down here we have so far The Distillery has removed so many times right and that changes every time we update the labels um we on the back have information that links to follow our
Story and then it it goes off to somewhere else we do not hammer it home on the bottle other than the carbon negative run statement which may be a mistake actually and is a constant conversation between us our sales team and everyone else but uh we have a bort
Status so this logo sits on the um sits on the bottle and I don’t know if you’re familiar I guess I guess you are um be you’re able to go in and look at our ratings on there as well um yeah we are still trying to decide how best to pack
Package it and whether to put a card and statement on there since it varies so quickly because you’re doing it every year you know you have to commit to buying so many labels get a sensible price so it’s kind of commercial boring decision as to not put it on there
Because you have to constantly update it um we have a calculator a kind of what I try to say a counter that tells you what’s ticking by on the website uh and then the social media channels the kind of way you PR it but not specifically on the package which
Hopefully keeps us out of trouble use one of those one of these QR code yes exactly and we’ve long talked about it although there’s an argument as to whether it should be sustainability or sounds of The Distillery or something something you’ve got a balance you know
Who to please and also you got to remember that are you selling to just someone that’s conscious about their carbon footprint which is a lot less people people who drink run it’s difficult so are you finding then the car neutral message is better for the corporate Market than the individual buyer it’s
Better for the buyer of an organization yes absolutely it is usually the ones so we see a lot of a lot of our sales come from um on trade so bars restaurants hotels and there you got a central buyer that deals with I don’t know 30 or 40
Sites cozy clubs a good example we stop there um we we then talk to their Central buyer who wants to have a sustainable option on the menu and then you say right well which run are you looking at if you’re not looking at us and then very quickly
It becomes apparent that they should choose us um so yeah that’s that’s usually how that works great brilliant thank you for bringing it all alive and yeah knitting it all together at the end nice story very well that is US finished so um any last questions more than happy to take
Them or brain Sarah or I think Sarah’s be to go if you want to talk about the next ex James you’ve got Paul Claire and Amber and Saul in the corner so um yeah thank you hopefully you found it really useful do you do feedback ear Amber so they’ll
Be sent something and yeah just give us your feedback back this is the first time we’ve done a product carbon footprint Workshop so so yeah just as I say continued Improvement is one of my mantras so so yeah be be honest and just yeah we’ll perfect it and keep going but
Thank you toen for allowing us to pull this together and um thank you all for attending thank you again for the speakers and yeah have a safe journey home and hope to see you soon y