Category 12: End of life treatment of sold products
This category includes emissions from the waste disposal and treatment of products sold by the reporting company at the end of their life. It includes the total expected end-of-life emissions from all products sold in the reporting year.
End-of-life treatment methods include disposal in a land fill, disposal in a land fill-gas-to-energy i.e. combustion of landfill gas to generate electricity, recovery for recycling, incineration, composting, and combustion of municipal waste to generate electricity.
A reporting company’s scope 3 emissions from end-of-life treatment of sold products includes the scope 1 and scope 2 emissions of waste management companies.
The procedure for calculating emissions from downstream end of life treatment of sold products is similar to that of category 5 (waste generated in operations). One major difference is that the latter uses data on total mass of waste generated in operations while the former uses data on total mass of sold products and packaging of these products, from the point of sale by the reporting company through the end of life after use by consumers. Another difference is that whereas it’s easy for companies to obtain data for waste generated during their operations, it’s not as easy to know how consumers will dispose products that they purchase, across different geographical regions.
To calculate emissions from this category, companies should collect data on the total mass of sold products and data on the packaging used to transport products, through to the point of retail, and any packaging that is disposed of prior to the end-of-life of the final product. They should also collect data on the proportion of waste being treated by different methods e.g. percent land filled, incinerated, recycled, etc). This data could be sourced from:
The company’s own research and internal data on how its products are treated after consumption.
Specific government directives on waste treatment of certain products e.g. the EU’s ‘Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive’.
Previously conducted research on consumer disposal patterns of specific products.
Average data on waste treatment of products from the point they are sold by the reporting company to the end of life after consumer use.
The emission factors to be applied are average waste-treatment specific emissions factors.
The formula below can be used to calculate these emissions.
The following example demonstrates how the formula above is applied.
