Description of impact
James Latham’s is one of the UK’ largest wholesalers of timber, wood-based panels and decorative surfaces, supplying to construction merchants and contractors, builders, designers, furniture makers etc. In 2020 we undertook a project to assess the carbon footprints of around 70% of the company’s product base, amounting to over 300 individual product footprints. Since Latham’s are a wholesaler, this meant searching for published data, such as Environmental Product Declarations, from their individual suppliers or more typically, in the absence of this, modelling footprints using secondary data and manufacturing insight alone.Results for all footprints were provided in the form of a carbon calculator tool. This Excel-based tool details carbon emissions associated with over 300 products as they leave a Latham’s warehouse for onward delivery to a client. Each calculation is broken down into emissions for upstream lifecycle stages, from manufacture at factories all over the world, through transportation into UK and Irish ports and onward to a Latham’s warehouse, and emissions associated with the Latham’s operation itself.
By accounting for such a significant proportion of the company’s product portfolio (essentially all their primary product base), the carbon calculator tool has enabled the company to add a ‘carbon footprint of your order’, specific to each purchase, to customer’s receipts. This information is increasingly sought after (yet typically difficult to source) by construction project managers, product designers etc., who are under growing pressure to report carbon emissions associated with their own activities (either as part of a project tender process, for assessment through schemes such as BREEAM and LEED, or for their own reporting and marketing activities).
While this proactive, order-specific emissions reporting is innovative, especially in the construction sector, the real innovation within the project lies with the inclusion of a ‘confidence score’ alongside each of the product footprints assessed within the carbon calculator tool, and by extension alongside the emissions figure printed on the customer’s sales receipt. This confidence score (on a scale from A – D) represents an assessment of the overall transparency and quality of the underlying data used to calculate each product footprint. Accordingly, manufacturers that have published their own product carbon footprints in accordance with an established methodological standard (e.g. EN15804) and that have had these verified by an independent third party (as required under ISO 14025 for making environmental product declarations) were rated with the highest confidence score. Other footprints were rated on a sliding scale depending on the level of disclosure by the supplier and the ‘fit’ of generic secondary data used where no company-specific data was available. The confidence score therefore acts as a visible statement regarding the transparency of the underlying data; where the confidence score is high it acts as a guarantee against ‘greenwashing’ for the consumer, and where the score is low it provides a clear incentive to suppliers to address this.
James Latham’s immediately saw the power of the data provided by the carbon calculator and have undertaken significant marketing activity off the back of it, not limited to printing emissions data (total emissions and confidence rating) on sales receipts. They have used the tool to position themselves as being at the forefront of emissions reporting in the sector and as driving change in relation to this. Both the company1 and the University2 issued press releases publicising the work, and this was picked up by local news media (North Wales Chronicle) and the trade press (Advances Wales; Timber Trades Journal). The company was also shortlisted for an Environmental Innovation award at the Timber Trade Journal industry awards that year.
Following the initial project, we embarked on a second project (‘Updates and additions to carbon calculator’, 2022/23) to consolidate and further develop the calculator and are in discussions regarding a further collaboration. Following publication of carbon emissions totals on customer sales receipts, alongside an associated confidence rating, BioComposites Centre has been asked to undertake three lifecycle assessments (LCA) for manufacturers in the sector, keen to improve their own confidence scores. Each LCA will be submitted for verification and publication on one of the publicly accessible Environmental Production Declaration platforms. Feedback from Latham’s suggests that other manufacturers have been having similar discussions.
| Impact status | Potential |
|---|---|
| Category of impact | Environmental |
| Impact level | Adoption |