Carbon monitoring

Carbon monitoring is the term used to determine how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses are produced by a company at any given point. The need to monitor carbon is driven by increasing pressure from industry, government and investment bodies to reduce their carbon emissions. Each EU country has developed a plan to cap the greenhouse gas emissions for power plants and other large producers of greenhouse gases. Similar pressure is put on those countries that fall under the Kyoto Agreement, affecting many companies and individuals. The United States is also pursuing similar controls, and the G8 summit was dominated by the subject.

Companies are increasingly considering environment friendly products as a competitive differentiators with products, like potato chips, now displaying their ‘carbon label’ in addition to the usual nutritional content. New legislation is forcing companies to understand their production of greenhouse gases and lower their emission levels to meet international standards.

Carbon Visibility

A packet of potato chips, for example, has raw materials being transported from different suppliers to one or more manufacturing locations (company owned or contract manufacturing facility), where it is processed. After being packed with wrappers from other suppliers, these chips are transported to central and regional distribution centers, from where they are transported to retail stores. The packaging is either recycled or destroyed after the product was consumed.

Overall carbon emission across all the supply chain entities – suppliers, shippers, manufacturers, retailers and consumers - must be added to allocate the emission associated with a bag of chips. The infrastructure to collect carbon information needs to be in place before supply chain partners can identify ways to reduce their emissions.

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