Certification / Accreditation

PAS 2050 Life-cycle carbon footprint of goods and services

PAS 2050 is the original British specification for assessing the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of goods and services, first published in 2008 and updated in 2011. It gives you a method for calculating a product’s carbon footprint from raw materials through to disposal, expressed per functional unit.

At its core, it answers a narrower question than a company-wide inventory: not what does our business emit, but what does this specific product or service emit across its life. The international alternative, ISO 14067, has become the more globally recognised reference point, but PAS 2050 remains in active use, particularly in UK food, drink and retail sectors.

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Who it’s for and what’s involved

Relevant if you are:

Asked by a retailer or customer for a product carbon footprint

Wanting to communicate a product’s emissions to consumers

Comparing alternative materials, suppliers or product designs on emissions

Already familiar with PAS 2050 from earlier supply chain work

Calculating a footprint involves:

Defining the product system and its boundary

Identifying all material sources of emissions across the life cycle

Collecting primary and secondary activity data

Calculating and reporting the result in CO2e per functional unit

How Q! supports your assessment

Product footprints that hold up to a retailer’s scrutiny

Retailers and customers increasingly ask for product-level carbon data, not just a company-wide number, and the methodology you choose matters. We help you decide between PAS 2050 and ISO 14067 based on who is actually asking and what they will accept, then build the footprint properly rather than producing a number that falls apart under questioning.

A retailer wants your product’s carbon footprint. Let’s make sure the number holds up.

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Mini FAQs

It depends on your audience. PAS 2050 remains well understood in UK food, drink and retail supply chains and is the more established choice domestically, while ISO 14067 is the international standard and the safer choice if you are selling or reporting beyond the UK. The two methods are broadly compatible, so the choice is more about audience than substance.

It has not been formally withdrawn, but ISO 14067 has become the more globally recognised reference point since its 2018 publication. PAS 2050 remains in active use, particularly where existing supply chain relationships or retailer schemes were built around it, but new work increasingly defaults to the ISO standard.

A GHG inventory under ISO 14064-1 covers your whole organisation over a reporting period; PAS 2050 covers a single product or service across its entire life cycle, from raw materials to disposal. Most businesses building a sustainability strategy need the company-wide inventory first and add product footprints where a specific customer or product line demands it.

PAS 2050 allows a cradle-to-gate assessment, covering everything up to the point the product leaves you, as well as a full cradle-to-grave assessment including use and disposal. Cradle-to-gate is often the practical starting point, particularly where you do not control what happens to the product after it leaves your business.

Carefully, and not without checking the rules. PAS 2050 itself does not set requirements for how you communicate results to consumers; environmental claims still need to comply with separate guidance and regulation on green claims, so the carbon number is only the starting point, not the finished marketing line.