Amazon announced the release of its product carbon footprint (PCF) tool on its Sustainability Exchange resource hub, providing companies with the ability to rapidly measure the carbon footprint of products, using a product description or bill of materials.
According to Amazon, the release of the new solution comes as product-level carbon data increasingly becomes a business requirement, as companies need to understand product-level emissions to meet their net zero goals, and as retailers, business partners request product-level measurements from supplier and regulators require product-level carbon disclosures.
Amazon said that its new PCF tool is built on the same foundation as the carbon footprinting that it has carried out for its own products across Amazon Devices and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The new tool applies machine learning and artificial intelligence to the steps of creating a PCF, with users able to enter a product description or a partial bill of materials for the solution to generate a complete product model including materials, manufacturing processes, and use-phase estimates. The tool labels inputs by source, allowing users to know what came from AI and what came from their own data, and to replace assumptions with supplier data.
The tool is being launched for consumer electronics sold in the U.S., with Amazon planning to add more product categories and geographies in the future. Amazon said that the tool is capable of generating product carbon footprints in accordance with ISO 14067-2018 and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.
Amazon said that it built the PCF tool to support its goal of reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2040, by addressing a need for companies across its value chain for solutions to help measure and reduce their emissions. The company launched its Sustainability Exchange in 2024 as a platform to offer companies – particularly those in Amazon’s supply chain – with access to sustainability tools and resources used by Amazon to decarbonize its operations, to help them to address their own climate footprints, although the solution is also available to companies that are not Climate Pledge signatories or Amazon suppliers.
Click here to access the solution.
