Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) companies have made significant progress in assessing the greenhouse gas impacts of their operations. In June 2011, the board collectively agreed to measure those emissions of business operations using the World Resource Institute / World Business Council on Sustainable Development GHG Protocol and report through the Carbon Disclosure Project, the recognized global GHG standard and reporting mechanism for companies.

The Sustainability Consortium (TSC) is an independent organization with more than 90 members representing the largest suppliers and retailers, non-profit and government organizations, and leading academic institutions in the area of product sustainability. TSC's goal is to design and implement harmonized, transparent and scalable science-based measurement and reporting systems to measure environmental impact of product sustainability that will be accessible for all producers and users of consumer products.

The joint CGF/TSC programme will advance this work by focusing on product lifecycle impacts, which will benefit from a single global framework to share information between companies, regulators, consumers and NGOs. Such a framework will enable everyone in the value chain to improve sustainability performance by gaining transparency and better understanding into the environmental impacts of individual consumer products and their lifecycles. The partnership between CGF and TSC should accelerate the development and implementation of this global framework.

Helen Fleming, climate change director at Tesco and co-chair of the CGF Sustainability work stream, said "the partnership with TSC is an important step in the CGF's plan to move towards a common global system for measuring and communicating the environmental impact of products, beginning with their carbon impact. It is an exciting development and we all need to work together to bring it to fruition."

Source: Consumer Goods Forum