PRODUCT CARBON FOOTPRINT BUILDER
Upcoming global legislations for organizations to report the environment impact of imported goods (in particular CBAM), means that corporations and manufacturers are faced with new needs to calculate Product Carbon Footprints (PCFs) for individual products that are traded across those regions. This presented a new opportunity for Manufacture 2030 (M2030) to help their users with tools to build PCFs and satisfy reporting demands.
PROBLEM
While in recent years, understanding of the importance of sustainability accounting has increased, manufacturing businesses with dedicated resources and matured knowledge of sustainability accounting are still in the minority in the global supply chain. Particularly so in term of PCFs, as a relatively new reporting demand.
So to help these manufacturers with varying maturity in sustainability knowledge respond to incoming legislations and customer demands, we asked: Can we enable users to calculate PCFs without extensive sustainability knowledge?
RESEARCH
- Learn from the experts: What are PCFs, and how are they calculated?
- Learn from the competitors: What is is working well (or not)?
- Learn from the users: What makes a valuable PCF feature? (Survey & persona)
Learning summary
From the various research we derived:
- A highly guided design that assumes minimal specialist knowledge and language would be ideal.As a majority of M2030 users have indicated low maturity and knowledge on PCFs.
- Some automations is essential but should be balanced with a good level of accuracy and specificity.This is important to encourage adoption, as manufacturer indicated that ‘resources’ is the 2nd largest limiting factor in building PCFs; but without a good level of accuracy, the value of the results would be limited
- Initially align with a non-sector specific PCF methodology framework (PACT).As M2030’s audience operates across many different sectors, it would make senses to adopt a methodology that caters for the widest possible range of industries. Additional industry level specificities can then be further developed.
PERSONA
Supplier manufacturer users were identified from the research:
DRAFT USER JOURNEY
An initial user journey was then mapped out, marking out the distinct categories of data that a user would need to input to complete the calculation. Starting from defining a product through to the final confirmation to calculate the a PCF.
IDEATE & PROTOTYPE
From there starts the design process, to ideate on:
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How to make the large number of inputs required manageable.
Would splitting the process into blocks would help compartmentalise each task and help user understanding?
Or if a ‘simple one-page builder’ would help streamline the workflow?
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Then working through each input category with sustainability experts, to design processes that are as ‘simple yet accurate’ as possible.
With these considerations in mind, an initial prototype was created for......
USER TESTING
Based on internal feedback the initial prototype assumes that a modular design would allow the process to be better explained in a step by step manner.
This prototype was then put in front of users to verify that assumption and test for general usability.
Some key feedback
- Several key concepts need better explanations. (e.g. UNCPC code, Declared units)
- The builder steps could better align with manufacture value chain step.
- Positively, the design did feel simple, and relatively easy to use.
REFINE
Various changes and improvements were made based on the user testing feedback. For example:
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Update the builder user journey to better fit manufacturing value chain steps. Also adding data sourcing information:
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Better explain some technical terms / requirements of the PCF builder:
Clarify the analysis scope of the PCF builder. 
Clarify the difference of similar terms.
MVP DESIGN
Incorporating the changes based on user feedback, an MVP versions of the PCF builder was development and launched as a pilot program.
Pilot results
Leverage on the PCF MVP release, M2030 is able to engage with many multi-national corporations to run pilot programs with their suppliers to build and exchange PCFs, with the potential for further adoption in the future.
As of Feb 2025:
- 14 multi-national corporations* are discussing / running pilot programs.
(* with the likes of Unilever, General Motor and Haleon ...etc) - 156 PCF calculations have been carried out, with 123 completed PCFs.
- Feedback from manufacturing suppliers has been positive.
With an average experience rating of 4.5 out of 5, and in general expressed that the pilots have been a great experience. - Suppliers raised interest in accessing the tool for their own usage.
On the back of the corporate driven pilots, a number of participating supplier have enquired on the possibility to maintain access of the PCF builder for their own use, and potentially for their own supply-chain program.
Continual learning / Future development
Beyond the MVP design, there are clear areas of improvements for the PCF builder, based on technical requirements for full alignment with PCF frameworks.
The pilot program also allowed us to continuously gather feedback and feature requests from active users (e.g. various clarifications, more flexible unit support, additional emission factor data bases ...etc), and improve the feature inline with our users as their understanding of PCFs also matures.
