Understanding Scope 1-3 Emissions and Their Role in Sustainability Reporting

Scope 1-3 reporting, based on the GHG Protocol, is a widely recognized framework for assessing organizational and product greenhouse gas impact.

• Scope 1 emissions are direct emissions from company-owned or controlled sources.
• Scope 2 emissions include indirect emissions from purchased electricity, steam, heating, and cooling.
• Scope 3 emissions account for all other indirect emissions, such as supply chain impacts, transportation, and product use.

For food brands, Scope 3 emissions often account for 70-90% of total greenhouse gas impact, making it a critical but challenging aspect of emissions tracking. Traditional LCAs have often struggled to provide accurate, scalable Scope 3 assessments due to their complexity and reliance on outdated data.

Why Traditional LCAs Struggle with Food Industry Complexity

LCAs were originally designed for industrial and manufactured goods, such as products like steel or electronics with relatively straightforward inputs and outputs. Arthur Gillett, HowGood’s Head of Research, notes that “the most commonly used tools for running LCAs have to be able to calculate an LCA for any type of entity, system, process, or product. That means they are jacks-of-all-trades, specialists in none.”

While LCA methodology has since been applied to food systems, it wasn’t built with the complexity of agricultural supply chains in mind. This creates several key challenges:

1. Static and quickly outdated data. LCAs provide a snapshot of an ingredient’s impact at a single point in time. However, agricultural systems are dynamic, with environmental impacts shifting based on location, climate variability, and evolving farming practices. An LCA completed even a few years ago may already be outdated due to changes in soil health, water use, and supply chain practices.
2. Limited comparability and consistency – Because LCAs require companies to make assumptions and use proxies where direct data isn’t available, calculations can vary significantly. Without standardized methodologies and set system boundaries, two LCAs on the same ingredient may produce very different results.
3. High cost and time investment. Conducting an LCA requires expert consultants, specialized software, and months of analysis. Many LCAs cost upwards of $50,000 per product, making them impractical for broad portfolio assessments.
4. Lack of precision in agricultural contexts. Many traditional LCA databases lack the granularity needed to assess food products accurately. For example, a generic “fruit puree” impact factor does not account for significant differences between strawberry jam and apple puree, leading to inaccurate results.

HowGood’s Approach: A Smarter, Scalable Alternative

Recognizing these challenges, HowGood has optimized a dynamic, digital Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) approach designed specifically for food products.

Unlike traditional LCA software that aims to handle any product category, HowGood has built a system tailored to the food industry, ensuring greater precision, usability, and scalability.

“Food is unique, and generalist LCA software doesn’t reflect that. The quality of background data and system boundaries in Latis allows for a level of specificity you just won’t get anywhere else. Within food, we have specified the system boundaries and the allocation assumptions that make what we’re building a low-effort LCA – but with every bit of the quality of output, and actually vastly more comparable than LCAs normally are." - Arthur Gillett, Co-Founder & Chief Research Officer at HowGood

Here’s how it differs:

• Higher-Quality Background Data: HowGood’s extensive database draws from over 600 independent data sources, ensuring that ingredient impact data is the most robust and specific available. Rather than relying on generic emission factors, HowGood provides ingredient- and location-specific insights.
• Optimized for Food Systems: The system boundaries, allocation choices, and methodologies used by HowGood are precisely optimized for food products. This eliminates the guesswork and inaccuracies that occur when food companies attempt to adapt general LCA tools to their needs.
• Faster and More Cost-Effective: Traditional LCAs can take months to complete, while HowGood’s PCF approach delivers carbon and water footprint insights instantly. This allows food brands to assess entire product portfolios at scale, uncover sustainable formulation and sourcing opportunities, and continuously track emissions.
• Built for Comparability and Accessibility: Traditional LCA software is often tailored for expert users, requiring extensive manual input and interpretation. HowGood’s platform ensures that users, even those without deep technical expertise, make informed sustainability decisions. The comparability of results across food products is also vastly improved, making it easier to benchmark sustainability performance.
• Refined and Reliable Data Methodology: Many LCAs rely on generic datasets and proxies that fail to reflect real-world agricultural variations. HowGood’s PCF methodology is certified by the Carbon Trust and aligned to the GHG Protocol, and its Scope 3 is built using the Hybrid Data Method. This ensures that the outputs reflect the latest available agricultural impact data, avoiding broad generalizations.

A Practical Alternative to Traditional LCAs

For food companies looking to improve sustainability reporting while balancing resource constraints, HowGood offers a highly practical alternative. Instead of investing heavily in static LCAs that quickly become outdated, companies can leverage HowGood’s dynamic, real-time insights to:

• Ensure better data accuracy with a food-specific methodology
• Scale sustainability reporting across an entire product portfolio without prohibitive costs
• Make Product Carbon Footprinting actionable for reaching reduction targets
• Make continuous improvements with up-to-date emissions tracking

The food industry needs solutions that are as adaptable and data-driven as the challenges it faces. HowGood provides that solution, ensuring that sustainability efforts are scalable, accurate, and impactful.

Ready to streamline your sustainability reporting? Schedule a walk-through with our team.