Understanding and managing product-level emissions is becoming increasingly important for companies aiming to reduce their environmental impact. In this blog, we’ll walk through the fundamentals of Product Carbon Footprinting—ideal for those just beginning their journey in carbon accounting.

We’ll start by exploring what a Product Carbon Footprint is, when and why you should calculate one, and how it aligns with different sustainability goals. Then, we’ll dive into the calculation process itself—covering system boundaries, process mapping, and how to allocate emissions across production steps using real-world examples.

Want a more visual, step-by-step explanation? We also created a webinar that walks through these topics in detail. You can watch it via this link.

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2. What is Product Carbon Footprint

2.1 Definitions

Before we start talking about product carbon footprint, we need to take a look at its big brother, Corporate Carbon Footprint.

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Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF)

The Corporate Carbon Footprint measures the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions generated by a company’s operations across a defined time period. It includes emissions from all activities within the organizational boundaries, typically following the GHG Protocol scopes:

• Scope 1: Direct emissions from owned or controlled sources (e.g. company vehicles, boilers)
• Scope 2: Indirect emissions from purchased electricity, steam, heat, and cooling
• Scope 3: All other indirect emissions in the value chain (e.g. purchased goods, transportation, business travel, product use, waste)

Its use cases are primarily to

• comply to regulations such as CSRD
• to calculate reduction targets such as SBTi

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Product Carbon Footprint (PCF)

The Product Carbon Footprint measures the total greenhouse gas emissions associated with a specific product, from raw material extraction through production, distribution, use, and end-of-life. This is often referred to as a cradle-to-grave assessment, though it can also be cradle-to-gate or gate-to-gate, depending on the system boundaries which we’ll get into later. PCF can be a part of a broader Lifecycle Assesment, estimating the complete environmental impact of a product.

Its use cases are much more focused on

• Communicating towards your customers.
• Optimizing for lower emissions on a product level
• improving product design

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2.2 Developing carbon maturity

With all the focus on carbon footprinting, a common question is: When should you calculate your Product Carbon Footprint (PCF)? There’s no one-size-fits-all answer—it depends on your company’s context. At ClimateCamp, we view PCF as part of a broader journey we call carbon maturity, which unfolds in four key steps:

Calculate
‍Most companies start by calculating their Corporate Carbon Footprint, focusing on Scope 1 and 2 emissions. This forms the foundation for carbon management and helps identify energy and operational efficiencies. The next step is to expand into Scope 3, using emission factors for the most material categories.

Engage
‍Once you have a high-level view, you can begin calculating PCFs using secondary data. While this gives you a general footprint per product, it lacks precision. That’s where supplier engagement comes in. By collecting primary data from your suppliers, you greatly enhance both Scope 3 and PCF accuracy.

Target
‍The next phase is to set emissions reduction targets, such as those aligned with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). This step often overlaps with supplier engagement and includes building a roadmap for both near-term and long-term reductions.

Reduce
‍Finally, you apply the insights gained to implement specific reduction strategies. These may include collaborating with partners on value chain emissions, switching to more sustainable materials, or designing for circularity.

Together, these steps provide a structured path from basic carbon accounting to actionable, product-level decarbonization.

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2.3 A granular example of CCF versus PCF

Should you only choose to calculate either Corporate or Product Carbon Footprint? No you will almost always start with a Corporate Carbon Footprint and then move down to a more granular, product-level footprint. But what do you learn from having more granular insights? Let me give you a tangible example that brings the difference between Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF) and Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) to life:

Suppose you have Company X, which is a mid-sized packaging manufacturer. They make plastic and paper-based food containers at multiple factories and sell to food brands across Europe.

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Insights from CCF

After calculating their CCF, they discover:

• 65% of their total emissions come from Scope 3 purchased raw materials (plastics, paperboard).
• 20% from electricity use at factories (Scope 2)
• 15% from transportation, employee commute and business travel

What this tells them is they need to engage with suppliers, optimize their energy mix and transportation routes as well as reducing emissions from commute and business travel. But this only gives a high-level view — it doesn’t tell them which products or customers are driving the emissions. Once you replaced your coal purchased electricity with solar panels, optimization will come from a much deeper understanding of what drives emissions for different products.

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Insights from PCF

They calculate PCFs for two best-selling products:

• Product A: A rigid plastic tray
• Product B: A paper-based cup with a bioplastic lining

They find:

• Product A has a higher PCF due to fossil-based plastic and energy-intensive molding.
• Product B has a lower PCF, but transport emissions are higher due to overseas bioplastic sourcing.

What this tells them:

• Switching materials in Product A could significantly reduce emissions.
• Product B has a good profile but could be optimized by sourcing bioplastic locally.
• These insights can help them redesign, differentiate products, or guide customer discussions.

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Takeaway:

CCF helps leadership understand broad emissions sources across the company and guides strategy to where the biggest offenders are. .

PCF helps product teams, procurement and sales pinpoint reduction opportunities at the product level — and communicate them to the relevant stakeholders.

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3. How do I calculate a PCF

There are two ways of calculating a PCF and also different methodologies, but we’ll use the GHG protocol and ISO 14067 as the basis, which are the 2 most commonly used frameworks for calculating PCF.

Now what you need to do before you start calculating is take 3 steps.

• Defining system boundaries: Cradle-to-gate, gate-to-gate, cradle-to-grave
• Mapping production steps
• Process mapping for each production step

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4.1 Define system boundaries

First we need to talk about system boundaries. When calculating a Product Carbon Footprint (PCF), it’s important to define the system boundaries—that is, which stages of the product’s life cycle are included in the analysis.

There are three main types of boundaries commonly used: cradle-to-gate, cradle-to-grave, and gate-to-gate.

Cradle-to-gate includes all emissions from raw material extraction through manufacturing and transportation up to the point the product leaves the factory. It excludes emissions from how the product is used or disposed of. This approach is most commonly used to communicate PCF towards a competitor. The reason for this is to avoid double counting, so you and your customer don’t both account for future use and end-of-life.

Cradle-to-grave, on the other hand, includes the entire life cycle of a product — from raw materials and production through use and end-of-life disposal. It’s commonly used as a basis for improving product design and circularity. A good example would be trying to find ways to extend product or material lifetime or improve recyclability. Other applications are when you want to holistically compare two products or when the evaluating party has access for (almost) the entire lifecycle of a product, for example car manufacturers.

Finally, gate-to-gate focuses only on the emissions within a company’s own production process. It excludes upstream and downstream activities, and is most useful for manufacturers aiming to improve operational efficiency and reduce in-house emissions.

4.2 Map production process

Next up is identifying the specific production steps involved in the creation of a product. This helps determine which steps. The process begins by mapping out all relevant stages of the product’s journey — from raw materials to end-of-life.

Typical stages include:

• raw material extraction (e.g., mining or farming)
• material processing (such as refining or converting materials)
• manufacturing and assembly, distribution (transport to customers)
• use phase (how the product is used and maintained)
• end-of-life management (disposal, recycling, or reuse).

Each of these steps can contribute significantly to the overall footprint and must be clearly documented within the defined boundary. For cradle-to-gate calculation we focus on the emissions related to the raw materials you purchase, the transportation to and from your sites, energy related to processing.

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4.3 Process mapping

The next step in calculating a Product Carbon Footprint is to create a process map outlining each stage of production. For every step the product goes through, it’s important to identify the inputs, processes, and outputs involved. Inputs may include raw materials (e.g., metals or plastics), energy sources (like electricity or fuel), and semi-finished products.

This detailed overview helps pinpoint where emissions occur. For example, harvesting may rely on diesel-powered machinery and land use, while manufacturing and processing typically consume energy and water—generating emissions upstream in the value chain.

Once you’ve mapped all the steps your product goes through before it leaves your site, you’re ready to begin the actual carbon footprint calculation.

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5. Choosing allocation methods

As mentioned earlier, calculating a Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) requires breaking down emissions by individual process steps. One important decision in this step is determining whether emissions from a process can be directly assigned to a product—or if they need to be allocated across multiple products sharing the same equipment or resources.

The simplest case is when a process is dedicated to a single product. This is called process allocation, meaning all emissions from that process are assigned entirely to that one product. No further allocation is required.

However, many production processes serve multiple products. In those cases, you’ll need to choose an allocation method to divide the emissions fairly. The three most common allocation methods are:

• Mass-based allocation
• Economic allocation (based on product value)
• Volume or energy-based allocation

Let’s walk through two examples using different methods.

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Example 1: Energy-Based Allocation for Brewing

Suppose your brewery emits 12,000 kg CO₂e from total energy use (electricity + gas) and produces two types of beer:

• IPA: medium fermentation time, uses 45% of total energy → 20,000 liters brewed
• Stout: long fermentation time, uses 55% of total energy → 10,000 liters brewed

Now, allocate emissions:

• IPA: 45% of 12,000 = 5,400 kg CO₂e
• Stout: 55% of 12,000 = 6,600 kg CO₂e

Then calculate the PCF per liter for electricity use:

• IPA: 5,400 ÷ 20,000 = 0.27 kg CO₂e/liter
• Stout: 6,600 ÷ 10,000 = 0.66 kg CO₂e/liter

You now have the energy-related emissions per liter for each beer type.

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Example 2: Mass-Based Allocation for Raw Materials

Now let’s look at raw material sourcing and allocate emissions based on mass.

This breakdown gives you the raw material emissions per can for both beers.

By applying the appropriate allocation method to each process—whether it’s based on energy, mass, or value—you can calculate the emissions tied to each product throughout its full lifecycle. Repeating this across all production steps will allow you to arrive at the final Product Carbon Footprint.

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6. Explore different ways of doing it yourself in Excel

Calculating a Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) is complex—and doing it manually in Excel might seem manageable at first. But once you start scaling across multiple products, varying production volumes, and different sites, those spreadsheets quickly become overwhelming. Add in the challenge of using the right emission factors, engaging suppliers for primary data, and applying allocation methods accurately—and the risk of errors and inefficiencies grows fast.

That’s where ClimateCamp can help. Our platform is built to handle these challenges at scale. Instead of wrestling with formulas, scattered files, and inconsistent data, you get a structured, centralized system designed specifically for product-level carbon accounting. ClimateCamp lets you:

• Pull data from multiple emissions factor databases
• Seamlessly integrate supplier data
• Personal guidance in carbon calculations and adapting them to your company’s needs
• Apply different allocation methods across products and processes
• Track progress toward reduction targets and visualize insights

We’re not just offering software—we’re your partner in the journey toward carbon maturity. Whether you’re just starting with Scope 1 and 2 or ready to engage suppliers and benchmark PCFs, we’ll help you move from manual data wrangling to meaningful action—faster and with more confidence.

After all, your focus should be on reducing emissions—not getting stuck in spreadsheets. Request a demo today and see for yourself how we can help.