Carbon Footprinting For Manufacturing: A Practical Playbook To Measure & Cut Emissions

You want a clear view of your manufacturing carbon footprint and a confident plan to reduce it. This quick playbook gives you both. You will learn what to measure, how to build a reliable baseline, common emissions hotspots, and the most practical levers for reducing carbon footprint in manufacturing.

Know What You Are Counting: Boundaries And Scopes

First thing’s first, when you set out to measure emissions, you’ll need to define what parts of the organisation are included. There are three accepted approaches under the GHG Protocol (the gold standard for carbon accounting):

1. Operational control

You include all the operations where you control the day-to-day running — regardless of who owns them.

This is the most common approach for small and mid-sized businesses without complex organisation structures.
Example: If you lease a warehouse but run the operations, you include its emissions.

2. Financial control

You include the operations where you control the financial and budgetary decisions, even if you don’t manage daily activities.

Common in corporate groups where one entity holds the purse strings but doesn’t manage operations directly.

3. Equity share

You include emissions in line with your share of ownership.

So if you own 30% of a joint venture, you account for 30% of its emissions.
This is less common for SMEs, but used by some larger or investor-backed businesses.

As well as tracking emissions at the organisational level, you can also choose to capture Product Carbon Footprints (PCFs). Product-level foot-printing can help manufacturers understand the emissions tied to making and delivering a specific product.

They can be a useful tool for comparing carbon impact between different product lines, and identifying sourcing or design improvements to reduce emissions. You may also receive requests for product-specific carbon data from customers and regulators.

Similar to organisational footprinting, when measuring a product carbon footprint you’ll need to define a process boundary, as shown in the diagram below. Your process boundary defines what parts of the product lifecycle - from cradle to grave - are included. Pick a method, state it clearly, and apply it consistently.

Until recently, capturing product-level carbon data has been too time-consuming and expensive for most small-and-mid-sized businesses. However, Seedling’s Product Carbon Footprint tool is changing that, with a streamlined and affordable process for measuring Product Carbon Footprints.

Next, you’ll need to decide which of the 3 Scopes you’re measuring. You can think of Scopes as buckets that help organise your emissions:

Scope 1: Direct emissions from assets you own or control. Think natural gas for boilers, diesel for forklifts, process emissions from calcination or chemical reactions.
Scope 2: Indirect emissions from the electricity, steam, heat, or cooling you buy. The emissions themselves don’t happen on your site/at the tailpipe of your fleet, but instead where the energy is generated.
Scope 3: All other indirect emissions in your value chain. Purchased materials, capital goods, inbound and outbound logistics, employee travel, waste, use of sold products, and end of life.

A full-scope footprint is a comprehensive assessment including all three buckets. If you choose to start with only a partial footprint - for instance reporting only Scopes 1 & 2 in response to a specific client request - clearly state what you have excluded to avoid mis-representing your carbon impact.

Finally, decide the annual period over which you’ll measure emissions. Best practice is to align carbon reporting with your financial year. Doing so is both easier - as business data is typically organised on an FY basis - and also necessary to comply with certain carbon reporting standards (such as PPN 006 Carbon Reduction Plan compliance for UK public sector suppliers).

Build Your Baseline: Data, Factors, And Quality

Your baseline is your first year of measurement and the foundation for target setting and reduction planning. To start measuring, you need two ingredients: business data and emission factors.

Business data reflects the things you do as a business to generate carbon emissions. There are 2 main types.
- Activity data: a source of primary data that closely tracks what you used or did. Examples: 20,000 kWh of electricity, 3 tonnes of virgin aluminum, 40kms travelled via train.
- Spend data: amount spent on a good or service. Examples: £10,000 on electricity consumption, £25,000 spent on virgin aluminium, £40 train ticket.
Emission factors are multipliers that translate business activities (represented by your business data) into carbon. Databases of conversion factors are published by governments, industry associations, and other research or commercial organisations.

When collecting business data, prioritise activity metrics over spend wherever possible. The amount you spend on a good or service can fluctuate significantly for reasons unrelated to carbon impact.

For example, imagine you take the same train journey twice. The first time, you travel off-peak and pay £20. The second time, you pay £40 to travel at peak. The carbon footprint of each journey is the same – your distance and mode of travel haven’t changed. But if you rely on spend as a proxy, your footprint would appear to double.

Wherever possible, use primary data from your meters, invoices, or suppliers. Use secondary data like spend only when primary data isn’t available. You should also consider the source, vintage, and completeness of your data when assessing quality.

We recommend carrying out a materiality assessment to help you focus your efforts where better data will make the biggest difference. Start by measuring a spend-based footprint, then identify your top 5–10 highest impact categories. Concentrate your data collection efforts here before moving on to lower-impact areas. This can be an iterative process year on year.

For manufacturers, raw materials are typically a major emissions hotspot (Scope 3, Category 1 – Purchased Goods and Services). Aim to collect primary data on the type, weight, and recycled vs. virgin content of materials you purchase.

This will mean looking to your ERP system, and how you use it. Most ERP platforms – such as SAP Business One, NetSuite, or Odoo – allow you to track material purchases by quantity and specification. Set up structured fields for the data you need: weight, material type, recycled content.

By focusing on high-impact categories – and using the tools you already have – you’ll improve accuracy without adding complexity.

Map Your Major Hotspots

Your data will look different depending on what you make, how you make it, and where. But in general, the biggest contributors fall into a handful of familiar categories:

Energy and fuel use on site (Scopes 1 & 2)‍

From furnaces and boilers to HVAC and compressed air, on-site energy is often the largest and most visible source of emissions. Electricity dominates Scope 2, while natural gas and diesel typically drive Scope 1.

Fleet vehicles (Scopes 1 & 2)‍

If you operate your own delivery fleet, company cars, or internal transport (like forklifts or pallet movers), they’ll fall under Scope 1 – unless electric, in which case they're Scope 2.

Purchased materials and raw inputs (Scope 3, Category 1)‍

Raw materials are a large source of emissions because of embodied carbon – the total emissions released during the extraction, processing, and production of those materials. Metals, plastics, textiles, and glass often carry high footprints – especially when virgin rather than recycled.

Capital goods (Scope 3, Category 2)‍

These are emissions from the production of equipment you buy – plant machinery, vehicles, IT hardware. Impact varies depending on your investment cycle.

Third-party logistics and distribution (Scope 3, Categories 4 & 9)‍

If you outsource logistics, emissions are counted as Scope 3. If you distribute product using your own vehicles, they may fall under Scope 1 or 2. Either way, mode of transport and load factor are key drivers of impact.

Other notable contributors include:

Process emissions from chemical reactions (e.g. in glass, metals, or cement manufacturing)
Refrigerants from HVAC and cooling systems – these can have a high CO₂e impact if leaks occur
Waste, water, and scrap rates – inefficiencies here can amplify upstream emissions
Use phase and end-of-life – for energy-using products, emissions during use can far outweigh manufacturing
Employee commuting and business travel – often overlooked, but still relevant. If your teams travel frequently for meetings, site visits, or trade shows, or if most staff commute by car, those emissions can add up. These fall under Scope 3, Categories 6 and 7.

Take Action: How Manufacturers Can Cut Carbon

Once you’ve mapped out the hotspots, the next step is to start tackling them. Below are the most practical ways to reduce emissions in manufacturing, structured by category.

A top tip: begin with the biggest areas and those most within your control.

1. Site Energy Use (Scopes 1 & 2)

Start here. You control it directly, and improvements often pay back quickly.

Improve efficiency: Fix leaks, insulate, maintain, and optimise. Run equipment only when needed. Don’t forget your office space too - read here for top tips on improving office energy efficiency.
Use renewable electricity: Install on-site solar or switch to a high-quality green tariff like those offered by Good Energy.
Switch fuels: Electrify where possible – using electric boilers instead of gas.
Measure and monitor: Use sub-meters and production-based KPIs to track progress.

These changes reduce emissions and lower costs – a win on both fronts.

2. Raw Materials and Inputs (Scope 3, Category 1)

Consider the following across both products and packaging:

Switch to lower materials: simple swaps (for instance substituting a glass bottle for aluminium) can make a significant difference to your footprint. Experts like the team at Seedling can help you understand the carbon hierarchy of materials.
Use recycled content where performance allows. Recycled metals and plastics have much lower footprints because they skip the high-emission processes needed to extract and refine raw materials. Increasingly recycled content is often simpler than wholesale material swaps.
Reduce material use: Lighter products and resource-efficient designs that lower scrap all help cut emissions (as well as cost).
Get better data from suppliers: Ask for Product Carbon Footprint data behind the materials you purchase. This is especially important to help you reflect any lower carbon purchasing decisions.

Better data drives better decisions – and pressures suppliers to improve too.

3. Company Fleet (Scopes 1 & 2) and Third Party Logistics (Scope 3, Categories 4 & 9)

Transport emissions can be significant – especially when they involve high-emission modes like air freight, or diesel-heavy fleets.

For owned fleet and plant (Scopes 1 & 2):

Switch to electric where feasible. Electric vehicles shift emissions to Scope 2 and can significantly reduce total footprint when powered by renewable electricity. This is increasingly feasible as vehicle range and supporting infrastructure improve.
Track usage and fuel type. Good internal data is the foundation for identifying reduction opportunities.
Right-size vehicles and routes. Optimise for efficiency based on load type, distance, and frequency.

For third-party logistics (Scope 3):

Get better data from your logistics partners. Ask for emissions estimates by route, mode, and load type – or request provider-specific emissions data where available.
Shift transport modes. Where timelines allow, move goods from air to sea or rail. Even switching from air to road can make a noticeable difference.
Consolidate shipments. Fewer, fuller loads reduce emissions per unit moved – and often cut costs too.
Review packaging. Lighter materials and right-sized cartons help reduce weight and volume, improving transport efficiency.

Whether you run your own fleet or outsource distribution, small changes can add up – especially across frequent, repeated routes.

4. Capital Goods (Scope 3, Category 2)

Less frequent but still important, especially for capex-heavy operations.

Extend asset life: Repair and maintain before replacing.
Choose low-carbon equipment: Look for transparency from vendors. Consider carbon impact as part of total cost of ownership.

5. Process Emissions and Refrigerants

Relevant to some industries more than others, but worth checking.

Use low-leak refrigerants and monitor equipment to catch issues early.
Explore process changes if chemical reactions are a major source of emissions.

6. Waste, Water, and Scrap

Often smaller on paper – but easy to improve and quick to act on.

Reduce scrap and rework: Better yields mean lower emissions per saleable product.
Avoid landfill: Divert to recycling or energy recovery where possible.
Cut water waste: Reduces associated energy use too.
Minimise packaging waste: Use recyclable, lightweight, or reusable materials – and avoid over-packaging where possible.

7. End-of-Life and Product Design (if relevant)

Design choices affect your footprint long before the production line – and long after the product leaves your site.

Design for energy efficiency in use: Products that use less energy during their lifetime can dramatically reduce total emissions – especially for electronics or appliances.
Support proper use through education: Clear instructions and guidance help customers get the most out of your product, and use it as efficiently as possible.
Design for disassembly or reuse: Modular builds, standard fasteners, and mono-material parts make it easier to repair, recycle, or upgrade – extending life and reducing waste.

8. Teams and Training

Train your teams: Operational habits matter – like shutting off idle equipment or identifying leaks early. Frontline teams often spot these issues first.

9. Business Travel and Commuting

While not manufacturing-specific, travel-related emissions are still part of your footprint.

Encourage lower-carbon commuting: Support cycling, car shares, or public transport through company policy or incentives.
Cut unnecessary travel: Replace in-person meetings with virtual ones where practical.
Track and manage business travel: Ask travel providers for emissions data and set guidelines for flight use – especially short-haul.

Conclusion

Getting to grips with your carbon footprint as a manufacturer is key to building trust with clients who now expect credible data. You don’t need to fix everything at once: focus on your top hotspots when it comes to decarbonisation and improving your data over time.

And if you’re still not sure where to start, want expert-checked numbers you’re confident sharing, or are simply short on time with the day-to-day, Seedling can help.

From glass products to medical devices to aerospace components, Seedling helps manufacturers track, understand, reduce, and report their carbon footprint. With expert support and tools that keep things simple, we help you build a plan that works in the real world.