Tennant Company, a leader in designing, manufacturing and marketing solutions that help create a cleaner, safer world, is beginning to measure the greenhouse gas emissions of its products and supply chains by road testing a new global framework that is part of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative.
Developed by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the two new GHG Protocol standards – the Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard and the Scope 3 (Corporate Value Chain) Accounting and Reporting Standard – provide methods to account for emissions associated with individual products across their life cycles and of corporations across their value chains.
Tennant Company’s Australia and New Zealand Marketing Manager Elissa Dowler states that “Tennant Company has a number of environmental initiatives in place to ensure that products and supply chains meet our corporate sustainability objectives; this new global framework will assist Tennant Company to report on these initiatives in a standardised way, which can provide transparency for our shareholders and customers as to how we measure up in terms of the global standard”.
Jonathan Lash, president of WRI, said, “We are encouraged by the overwhelming response from the private sector seeking to road test the new standards. There were more than 120 applications across a broad array of sectors and regions worldwide. The road testing will provide critical input in ensuring that the standards generate credible and meaningful data for business and government decision-makers, while considering the practical challenges that businesses and programs will face during implementation.”
“Increasingly, companies are looking beyond their own boundaries and developing strategies to reduce GHG emissions in their supply chains and in the products they make and sell,” added Bjorn Stigson, president of the WBCSD. “By taking a comprehensive approach to GHG measurement and management, businesses and policy-makers can focus attention on the greatest opportunities to reduce emissions within the full value chain, leading to more sustainable decisions about the products companies buy, sell and produce.”
While many companies have been measuring the emissions from their own operations and electricity use, the Scope 3 Standard will, for the first time, allow companies to look comprehensively at the impact of their corporate value chains, including outsourced activities, supplier manufacturing, and the use of the products they sell. Road testers of the Product Standard will measure the climate change impact of products ranging from magazines, food and jeans to computers, wind turbines and steel.