Carbon Footprint

A carbon footprint measures the total amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions released directly or indirectly by a product, company, or activity. It is expressed in CO₂ equivalents (CO₂e), allowing different gases to be compared on a common scale.

What does a carbon footprint include?

The carbon footprint is not limited to carbon dioxide (CO₂) but also includes other key greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, such as:

• Methane (CH₄)
• Nitrous oxide (N₂O)
• Fluorinated gases (F-gases): hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), sulfur hexafluoride (SF₆), and nitrogen trifluoride (NF₃)

The climate impact of these gases is translated into CO₂ equivalents (CO₂e) because each gas has a different Global Warming Potential (GWP). The GWP is a scientific measure that allows comparisons of how much heat a given gas traps in the atmosphere compared to CO₂ over a specific time period. The higher the GWP, the more a gas contributes to global warming relative to carbon dioxide.
This conversion into CO₂e makes it possible to aggregate and compare emissions across gases and processes easily.

Why does the carbon footprint matter?

Understanding your carbon footprint is a critical step toward reducing emissions and achieving climate neutrality. By identifying emission hotspots, companies can:

• Improve energy and resource efficiency
• Optimize supply chains and transport
• Reduce Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions
• Comply with CSRD and CBAM requirements
• Support Net Zero strategies

How sustamize helps companies calculate and reduce carbon footprints

Sustamize supports companies in building accurate and scalable carbon footprints by providing access to dynamic, high-quality CO₂e databases and automated tools tailored for Product Carbon Footprinting (PCF) and supply chain emissions analysis. Our databases cover materials, electronics, logistics, energy, and manufacturing processes, enabling businesses to replace generic averages with reliable, audit-ready emissions data.

In addition to comprehensive datasets, sustamize offers intelligent tools that streamline the entire carbon-footprinting workflow. With automated PCF creation aligned with ISO 14067, instant Bill-of-Materials processing, AI-driven data mapping, and component-level emissions for electronics, companies can move from raw data to meaningful carbon insights within minutes rather than weeks. This allows sustainability, cost engineering, procurement, and product teams to identify emissions hotspots, optimize materials and supply chains, and comply with reporting standards such as CSRD, CBAM, ESRS, and the GHG Protocol.

By combining high-quality CO₂e data with automation, sustamize makes carbon transparency more efficient, more accurate, and significantly easier to scale across entire product portfolios.

Ready to start calculating and reducing your carbon footprint?

Contact our team or request access to sustamize’s databases and tools.