Colors are passion, emotions and personality. At Siegwerk, inks and coatings are our specialty and we use color to bring the packaging and products of our customers to life.
Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) of Siegwerk's Products
Sustainability
We are committed to further reduce our product emissions.
As responsible company, we are strongly committed to make a positive contribution to society and the environment by strategically reducing the ecological impact of our business activities and our products. Therefore, providing full transparency on the environmental footprint of our products is of great importance to us.
Understanding the carbon footprint is key to reduce emissions
Carbon footprint in general is the total amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) produced through direct and indirect actions. This includes emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other GHG gasses produced through the full cycle of a company’s activities. To ensure comparability, the carbon footprint is usually expressed in how many tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2eq) the activities produce by using various conversion factors in accordance with ISO 14067:2018.
Here, various processes and sources are divided into 3 scopes of carbon emissions. Scope 1 covers direct sources of emissions and pertain mostly to sources owned or operated by a company. Scope 2 covers indirect sources of emissions from energy, and scope 3 covers indirect upstream and downstream emissions including transport as well as goods and services purchased. This categorization enables a company to understand its full value chain emissions covering its own operations, its suppliers as well as its customers, and thus to identify the greatest opportunities for emissions reduction.
Measuring the climate impact of activities, products and processes
The Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) has gained importance in recent years, being the decisive factor for the factual measurement of the climate impact of activities, products and processes. It is utilized as indicator for the achievement of desired climate targets or certain climate protection measures. It is to be understood as the sum of all 3 emission scopes.
The Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) represents the next level of European environmental policy and will be used to communicate essential environmental parameters. It should answer the demand for harmonization, standardization and comparability of the environmental performance of products. Here, environmental footprint impact categories refer to specific categories of impacts. These are generally related to resource use, emissions of environmentally damaging substances (e.g., greenhouse gases and toxic chemicals), which may as well affect human health.
In addition to CO2 emissions, the PEF also includes other emissions into the air, soil, groundwater and surface water as well as other resource consumption, waste and noise emissions. Thereby, the PEF forms the comprehensive basis for the declaration of the products with regard to their environmental compatibility and that’s why we at Siegwerk are also implementing this approach.
Siegwerk´s Product Carbon Footprint
By providing information about all the three different scopes of GHG emissions, Siegwerk customers are able to precisely and easily determine their own complete Product Carbon Footprint.
The information given as PCF of Siegwerk products does not only include direct emissions from the various production locations around the world (Scope 1) and the associated electricity purchased (Scope 2), but also indirect emissions that occur from all raw materials purchased as well as the transportation of Siegwerk products to customer´s gate (Scope 3).
The PCF which is specified individually for each product sold by Siegwerk, is to be understood as a “cradle to customer gate” PCF.
Learn more about Siegwerk’s overall commitment to becoming carbon-neutral.
Find out more about our Siegwerk PCF approach in our specific Product Carbon Footprint Whitepaper .