New service promises to speed up carbon footprinting for big business

PPF uses software developed by Californian start-up Footprinter. It employs powerful data collection, manipulation, and visualisation technology, to footprint a whole product portfolio. Best Foot Forward said it had analysed over 300 products in less than 10 weeks for Crown Paints using PPF. This is significantly faster than 'Lifecycle Analysis’, a system commonly used for footprinting products, but which can take many weeks to provide results for just one product.

"Many larger businesses are looking for ways to reduce their total footprint in the most intelligent, efficient way," Simon Miller, director at Best Foot Forward, said. "It is estimated that the top 100 companies together control more than one quarter of the key resources in global supply chains. Changing what those companies do can have a huge impact." 

Mark Lloyd, sustainability manager at Crown Paints, said that through using the PPF service, the manufacturer now had detailed footprints for all its products manufactured in the UK and was using the findings to set sustainability targets for the business going forward.

"Crown Paints is working with our supply chain to target high carbon impacts, to see how we can reduce our final product footprints. Product Portfolio Footprinting gives us the ability to do this," he said.

Andrew Yeo, head of Supply Chain Carbon Reduction at Tesco, added: "Tesco is committed to reducing the footprint of our full product range by 30 per cent, by 2020. Meeting this target requires rapid action across our business and supply chain, and Best Foot Forward is supporting us to measure broadly and to target key hotspots – in any and all of our product categories. We have been really impressed by Best Foot Forward’s portfolio approach to the challenge of carbon reductions at scale."