Challenge

A product footprint helps a company identify cost-savings. It provides insight into emissions and resource consumption that allows companies to implement carbon, water and waste reduction strategies. It enables risk mitigation through supply chain transparency and engages suppliers for increased sustainability. It provides a foundation for product differentiation.

The opportunities a footprint uncovers can be as substantial as the complexity of developing a footprint. How do you measure carbon, water and waste emissions or resource consumption during each phase of a product's life? How do you detect conflict minerals that may be residing in your products? Is it possible to obtain more than a single snapshot in time when many of the factors measured in compiling a footprint are subject to constant change? Finally, once a footprint has been developed, how do you process and utilize the data to meet your company’s sustainability goals?

Our Solution: Product Carbon Footprint

Source 44 combines credible and verifiable methodologies with dynamic, innovative technology to obtain and assess footprint data for products across a specific supply chain.

Source 44 gathers primary footprint data directly from suppliers, documenting the data from a cradle-to-gate perspective^[1]. Footprinting is done in preferred formats^[2] while accommodating the dynamic nature of energy usage and its resulting carbon emissions.

The information is then stored and managed in Source 44’s online platform, Source Intelligence™. The platform features easy-to-use visualization tools: Interactive Treemaps illustrate the composition of a footprint, and Footprint Tracer Maps describe the geographic path of a product’s components as they progress through the supply chain. These tools enable users to leverage the footprint data to drive sustainable decision-making.

Providing more than a single snapshot in time, a product footprint is updated annually with supplier-specific data over the life of a subscription. Users can track changes to each factor in a product footprint over time, facilitating a continual discovery of new opportunities for improvement.

When footprint reductions are implemented, the effects are clearly visible and analysis can be done to determine how close the reduction plan matched targets.

Our Solution: Product Water Footprint

Water and its scarcity are taking on a growing importance in the field of sustainability, a recognition of the old adage: Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over. To understand how much water was used, for example, in the supply chain of a sweatshirt, including the consumer-use phase, requires developing a water footprint of the product. Incorporating Source 44’s water footprinting into your product’s footprint will allow your organization to make the best procurement decisions possible.

Source 44’s water footprinting methodology follows the Water Footprint Network’s (WFN) guidance in the Water Footprint Manual, which is expected to become the world’s standard on water footprinting. The WFN’s methodology includes blue (fresh surface or groundwater), green (precipitation removed from natural water cycle) and grey (an indicator of freshwater pollution) water footprints. The WFN methodology has the added advantage of integrating geographical decisions into the footprint development process.

 Like the carbon footprinting process, Source 44 will work to gather primary data directly from your suppliers. Where required Source 44 can leverage its relationship with the WFN to utilize globally accepted defaults for a product’s water footprint.