What is the Food & Drink Sub-Category?
Food & Drink is a significant sub-component of Purchased Goods & Services (PG&S) under Scope 3 emissions. This category includes all the food, drink, and associated raw materials your business buys. For food companies, this often represents the largest source of emissions in their value chain, typically accounting for more than 70% of total Scope 3 emissions.
Tracking these emissions is crucial to creating an accurate Company Carbon Footprint (CCF), as it captures the environmental impact of everything from farming practices to the production of packaging materials used for your ingredients.
Why Is Food & Drink So Important?
For food businesses, Food & Drink is often the biggest contributor to overall emissions due to the energy and resources required in farming, production, and transportation. Reporting on this sub-category is not just essential for regulatory compliance but also for understanding and addressing key emissions hotspots in your operations.
What Do You Need to Do?
The good news is that My Emissions does most of the heavy lifting for you! Our platform is equipped with comprehensive emissions data covering a wide variety of food and beverage categories.
Your main role is to provide clear and complete purchase data, including:
Product name (e.g. tomatoes, pasta)
Quantities (e.g. 500kg, 1,000kg).
Ensure the data spans your entire reporting year.
You can source this information directly from your purchase orders or supplier invoices, often accessible through your procurement or accounting systems.
How Does My Emissions Use This Data?
Once you upload your purchase data, our platform applies emissions factors tailored to food and drink products (you'll have the option to check and update these matches). These factors cover the lifecycle of your purchases from cradle-to-store, ensuring your report reflects a credible, science-based emissions profile.
How Does This Fit Into Carbon Reporting Standards?
Food & Drink data plays an important role within key carbon reporting frameworks:
GHG Protocol: Purchased Goods & Services are required in any credible carbon footprint report, especially for food companies.
WRAP Guidance (UK guidance for emissions reporting in the Food & Drink sector): In addition to reporting Scope 1 and 2, recommends prioritising Food & Drink data due to its significance for food businesses.
SBTi: Scope 3 data must cover at least 67% of total emissions, but best practice recommends capturing at least 90% for comprehensive reporting. Companies setting Science-Based Targets must include Food & Drink in their Scope 3 inventories and are likely to need a FLAG (Forest, Land, and Agriculture) target to address farming-, land-, and forest-related emissions.