As we are guided by our commitment to consider the impacts of our actions on the next seven generations, the prospect of global climate change troubles us deeply. While reducing our greenhouse gas emissions is the focus of many of our environmental initiatives and drives us to pursue reductions in our work on our products, packaging and logistics, we are also pushing for lifestyle changes among our employees and consumers. Seventh Generation is also joining with other progressive companies to push for meaningful climate change legislation.
Understanding our carbon impacts. In 2009, we established a bold greenhouse gas reduction goal that call us to decrease our GHG emissions 15% by 2016 across the entire life cycle of our products. To develop a strategy to address this goal, we did some pioneering research to estimate the carbon impact of all of our products from cradle to grave. This includes raw material extraction, manufacturing, distribution, product use, recycling and waste management. This ground-breaking work gave our company a first-ever insight into which products and which parts of our products’ life cycles contribute most to our total company carbon footprint. We examined each life cycle phase by crossing our sales data and the weight of our product and packaging components with the relevant Greenhouse Gas emission factors. We also supplemented our own information with industry average data, where needed.
We found that the carbon intensities of the consumer use phases of our hand dish liquid and our liquid laundry far outweigh any other impact. We have long made washing laundry in cold water and line drying a focus of our engagement work. This study is spurring us to discuss ways to more effectively inspire deeper behavior changes.
Examining GHG intensity excluding the use phase, we found that:
- diapers and paper products dominate with the dish and laundry categories coming in next; and
- materials production is the most energy intensive, followed by the end-of-life phase.
These results will help us prioritize future life cycle assessment work to identify opportunities for improvements — be they in materials selection, ingredient processing, or regarding our aspiration to create biodegradable, compostable products which would have a very low end-of-life carbon impact. This study will also guide our efforts to engage our manufacturing partners more deeply.
→ Read about our Summer of 2010 Laundry Challenge.
GHG goals and results:
- Highlight: We lowered our greenhouse gas emissions 12% in the past year, taking sales growth into account.
Our GHG goal calls for us to achieve reductions in emissions of 80% by 2050 (2% per year) from a 2005 baseline, normalized to sales. This goal includes the significant impacts from our materials, ingredients and packaging. To guide this effort, we have set a mid-term goal of reducing the lifecycle GHG emissions of our products by 15% (from a 2007 baseline) by 2016.
We feel it is important that we examine both our absolute greenhouse gas emissions (the total amount of emissions over time without considering how much our sales have increased) as well as our sales-normalized emissions (this can be thought of as emissions per dollar of sales). We established a normalized goal as our sales have grown 240% since 2005 and we did not feel an absolute 80% reduction would have been possible. Nevertheless, our deep concern about global climate change demands that we try to reduce the total amount of GHG we emit to the environment. Our results:
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Change in GHG emissions (normalized to sales)
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Change in GHG emissions (absolute) |
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2009-2010
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↓ 12% Note that sales increased 11% |
↓ 2% |
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2005-2010
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↓ 55% |
↑ 55% |
Our efforts to understand the greenhouse gas contributions from our suppliers are ongoing. We have begun to collect the necessary data and plan to develop a system for incorporating this information into our GHG accounting system in 2011. In 2010, we examined the greenhouse gas contributions of our facility energy use, our employee commuting, and business travel, but found that the emissions associated with our materials, ingredients, packaging (MIPs) and product transport are responsible for 99% of our carbon footprint and thus are worth a closer look. Completing our switch to a decentralized product transport system, our increase in the use of renewable materials, and greater sales growth in the less carbon-intensive cleaning, dish and laundry product categories are all factors in our greenhouse gas reductions.
green_house_gas_accounting_chart
Dive more deeply into our data and our methodology here.
2010 Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Metric Tons CO2e
| Category | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | Total change from 2009 | Sales-normalized change from 2009 | Total change from 2005 | Sales-normalized change from 2005 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | 42,561 | 43,053 | 64,636 | 72976 | 67,330 | 65,957 | -2% | -12% | 55% | -55% |
| Facility Energy Use | 52 | 66 | 72 | 110 | 132 | 136 | 3% | -7% | 162% | -23% |
| Employee Commuting | 117 | 99 | 110 | 155 | 193 | 181 | -6% | -16% | 55% | -55% |
| Business Travel | 140 | 218 | 375 | 470 | 410 | 366 | -11% | -19% | 161% | -23% |
| Product Transport | 6,405 | 6,948 | 10,474 | 14,551 | 11,966 | 10,761 | -10% | -19% | 68% | -51% |
| Materials, Ingredients, Pkg. | 35,847 | 35,723 | 53,605 | 57,690 | 54,629 | 54,512 | 0% | -10% | 52% | -55% |
Notes: MIPS includes the inputs from our materials, ingredients and packaging.
CO2e is the universal unit of measurement used to indicate the global warming potential of a mixture of greenhouse gases.
The World Resources Institute (WRI) and World Business Council for Sustainable Development Protocol define three different types of emissions categories: Scope 1: direct emissions from company-controlled buildings and vehicles; Scope 2: indirect emissions from electricity, steam, or heat produced by another organization: Scope 3: other indirect GHG emissions from: transportation of purchased materials or goods; employee business travel; employee commuting; and estimates of materials, ingredients and packaging GHG burdens. 2010 facility energy use data were calculated and 2007–2009 facility energy use data were re-calculated based on new conversion factors for GHG emissions for KWH electricity published in February, 2011 by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and applicable beginning in 2007.
Employee commuting information is based on an annual survey of Seventh Generation employees.
Methodology: We follow the widely used GHG protocol developed by the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development to enhance transparency and comparability of data.
The largest contributor to our GHG emissions comes from our materials, ingredients and packaging. Our life cycle assessment studies of various products provide us with the most accurate GHG data related to our products and packaging. Where we lack hard data, we use estimates based on component-specific GHG emission factors from industry sources and published reports to account for approximately 85% of the CO2 intensity for our materials, ingredients and packaging. These sources provide a gross estimate of GHG emissions; where data are missing, we have been forced to estimate or extrapolate from information for similar materials. While estimating is not ideal, we feel confident that our year-to-year comparisons are fairly accurate.
