Legislation forces companies to dive into their supply chains

European legislation such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) is forcing companies to work on sustainability. Many efforts focus on mapping Scope 3 emissions. Calculating or retrieving data on transport emissions is step one for most companies. Step two, gathering CO₂ data from suppliers of raw materials and components, is already proving a lot more difficult in practice. Fortunately, it will be some time before an official stamp from an independent auditor is required. 

Quooker has relatively few problems with mapping transport emissions. The manufacturer of boiling-water taps requests details from its transport partners, who are selected for their ability to provide CO₂ data. By no means every carrier is able to do so, Quooker’s Logistics Manager Pieter Jonkman discovered during the tender process that started two years ago. “If it was clear in advance that a carrier could never meet this criterion, they were not invited to submit a tender. But some carriers that did receive an invitation were also rejected because they were insufficiently able to provide insight into their emissions.”

Quooker has found that ocean freight companies in particular stand out positively. Their portals offer insight into CO₂ emissions down to shipment level. “We don’t see real-time emissions just yet. But once a shipment has arrived, we can immediately download the CO₂ report,” Jonkman states. “And now our road carriers are also able to submit CO₂ data at shipment level.”

The quality of CO₂ data is surprisingly good, Sustainability Manager Sam Smeets has noticed. Right after he joined Quooker at the beginning of this year, he started calculating emissions based on secondary data. “When we compared those calculations against the primary data from our transport partners, they turned out to be incredibly close. The difference was less than 3%. This is not only due to the quality of the transport partners, but also to the quality of our own data. If you know how many products were sent to which customers, their weight and which transport method was used to do so, you can calculate the emissions fairly accurately.” … … …

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