Leveraging over 20 years of expertise in measuring and benchmarking carbon, EarthCheck has once again raised the bar for the tourism industry, unveiling three new state-of-the-art carbon emissions calculators focused on freight, food and laundry.
These new tools complement EarthCheck’s existing carbon footprint calculator, which EarthCheck clients have been using for the past 20 years to measure their Scope 1 and 2 emissions, as well as Scope 3 emissions for waste, embodied energy and visitor and employee transport.
EarthCheck’s calculators are powered by the world’s largest evidence-based dataset on tourism infrastructure performance, made up of over 500 million data points.
EarthCheck Founder and CEO Stewart Moore says the three new calculators will empower tourism operators to better understand and manage their carbon footprint, and align their business practices with environmental stewardship.
“EarthCheck has consistently been at the forefront of driving sustainability in tourism, and these latest offerings echo this commitment,” Mr Moore says.
“EarthCheck’s calculators help to change how businesses and travellers perceive and manage their carbon footprint. By making the abstract concept of carbon emissions tangible and measurable, these calculators can inspire greater climate action and enhance environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices across the board.”
The new tools allow users to input data about their freight and laundry operations and food consumption on a yearly, quarterly or monthly basis. Based on that data, the calculators compute the carbon emissions associated with that activity, giving users a clearer picture of their environmental impact.
The data can then be downloaded into CSV format for further analysis and record-keeping.
Freight
EarthCheck’s Freight Carbon Emissions Calculator is particularly significant for businesses and procurement teams that are eager to amplify their Scope 3 reporting.
Scope 3 emissions are those that are not directly produced by a company itself, but are instead produced by providers and suppliers as part of that company’s value chain.
These emissions are both large (making up between 65 to 95 per cent of most companies’ carbon impact) and indirect, which can make the task of tracking them seem overwhelming.
EarthCheck Chief Scientist Melinda Watt says the new calculator goes a long way towards simplifying the process, enabling users to input data – including transport mode, freight weight, and distance – to estimate the CO2, CH4 and N2O emissions of their freight operations.
“The Freight Carbon Emissions Calculator simplifies the measurement and reporting of indirect emissions within the value chain,” Ms Watt says.
“It enables procurement teams to base their transport mode choices on accurate carbon emission data, aligning their decisions with the company’s sustainability goals.
“This facilitates greater transparency, accountability, and progress tracking in a company’s journey towards carbon neutrality.
“It also provides businesses with an important tool to highlight one of the major benefits of buying local. By using locally sourced products and ingredients, they can reduce their reliance on freight services, and make a demonstrable reduction to their emissions.”
Food
EarthCheck’s Food Carbon Emissions Calculator illustrates the environmental impact of dietary choices, and will help tourism operators to promote low carbon intensity alternatives.
“By calculating carbon emissions associated with various food items and quantities,” Ms Watt says, “it encourages users to consider the climate implications of their eating habits and promotes sustainable food consumption.”
Users can add different food items and specify quantities, and allow the calculator to do the rest. For instance, if you enter ‘Milk’ with a volume of 10 litres, the calculator will process this information and display the CO2e emission for this quantity as 30 kilograms.
If you add ‘Apples’ weighing 10 kilograms, it will calculate the emissions as 3.410 kilograms CO2e. The total carbon emissions are automatically updated with each addition, giving you a comprehensive overview of your food-related carbon emissions.
Laundry
EarthCheck’s Laundry Carbon Emissions Calculator helps businesses gauge their laundry-related carbon emissions to identify potential areas of improvement and initiate steps towards greener practices.
With a click, users can either add details about the total energy consumption of their laundry, or the tonnage of their laundry. The corresponding carbon emissions are then calculated based on their country’s specific emission factor.
For instance, if a user knows the total energy consumption of their laundry is 10 kilowatt-hours (kWh), then the calculator can process this data to compute and display the associated carbon emissions.
Alternatively, if they know their laundry weighed 1 metric tonne, then the calculator will use a standard value (180 kWh) and their country’s emission factor to calculate the CO2 emissions (which, in this case, would be 10.53 kg CO2e).
An unparalleled resource for sustainable travel
EarthCheck prioritises data accuracy and relevance. To ensure each of the calculators provides up-to-date and reliable data, the emissions factors used will be regularly updated to reflect the most current research.
The calculators are relevant to over 70 countries, using country-specific emission factors.The factors are updated by the EarthCheck Research Institute annually where possible. In addition, EarthCheck researches whether any new calculators are needed for international reporting on an annual basis.
Ultimately, Mr Moore says the new calculators represent a leap forward in sustainable travel, and reflect EarthCheck’s unwavering belief that everyone has a role to play in tackling climate change.
“These innovative calculators, built on EarthCheck’s decades of sustainability expertise and massive dataset, empower us all to turn data into actionable insights,” he says.
“With each decision influenced by these insights, we make each journey a step towards a greener world, proving that what’s good for the planet can also be good for business.”
EarthCheck clients can find the freight, food and laundry carbon emissions calculators easily within the MyEarthCheck portal. Simply navigate to the self-assessment checklist in the ‘Energy’ section under the ‘Program’ tab, and look for them in the ‘Benchmarking’ subsection of the self-assessment checklist. These calculators can also be utilised by entities outside of the EarthCheck Certification program.
