To achieve The Climate Label in 2025 and beyond, here's what you'll need to do…
Measure
Small Brands: 1-2 hours
Large Brands: 1-3 months
Measure emissions and assess the carbon impacts of all of your products and services from cradle to customer.
It all starts here: with a solid inventory of the carbon emissions from making and delivering your products and services. Your measurement will include Scopes 1, 2, and upstream Scope 3 emissions (per the Greenhouse Gas Protocol).
You may already have this step nailed and have a solution lined up. That's great! On the other hand, measurement may sound overwhelming, expensive, and complex. Don’t worry. We’ve simplified the process through extensive guided content and our software tool, the Business Emissions Evaluator, or “BEE.”
FAQs
What are Scopes 1, 2, 3 emissions?
Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions represent the entirety of a carbon footprint from a company’s activities.
- Scope 1 are direct emissions that come from controlled facilities. This can include the fuel you burn in company vehicles, the natural gas you use to heat your office, or any direct emissions from owned manufacturing plants.
- Scope 2 are indirect emissions. This is mostly your purchased electricity.
- Scope 3 are indirect emissions from your supply chain – that means emissions released from extracting raw materials used for finished products, corporate business travel, employee commuting, shipping and transporting, and more. In most cases, Scope 3 makes up a majority of a company’s footprint.
What Scope 3 categories do you measure?
Our certification requires that you measure Scope 3 Categories 1-7 and 9. Check out our Standard to learn more about measurement boundary requirements.
We haven’t measured our emissions. How can we get started?
No worries! We get that a lot :) our carbon management tool, the BEE, is the low-cost, user-friendly answer for you. It’ll guide you step-by-step to collect data about your company, create an emissions estimate, and — for companies with over $5M in annual revenue — prompt you to add detailed operational data to produce a GHG inventory, which is a report of your company’s total emissions.
If you prefer, you can also work with a consultant or use an external tool to create an emissions report that meets our certification requirements.
Fund
Varies based on your projects
Set your budget and fund qualifying projects within and beyond your value chain to reduce emissions.
We require all companies to allocate real dollars to climate projects. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, so we’ve designed the certification to work for companies of all shapes and sizes.
You have a unique set of opportunities to reduce emissions based on your industry, location, materials, and more — we enforce criteria in the Certification Standard to ensure these climate investments are credible, high impact, and “additional” so that they accelerate emissions reductions within each company and around the world.
We offer coaching, workshops, and other hands-on support to help you navigate - and document - how you’re funding the climate transition.
FAQs
How much will I have to spend?
Every company has a role to play in contributing, little by little, to funding the climate transition. You’ll calculate a budget based on a carbon fee defined in the Certification Standard — that fee is the same for all companies — and your total emissions, so that your budget is equivalent to the scale of your emissions. You’ll then deploy that budget to climate projects across your company, supply chain, and around the world, all the while strengthening relationships with your manufacturing partners, driving loyalty among consumers shopping with their values, and — you guessed it — leading to real emissions reductions. When your emissions decrease, your budget will too. That’s how the funding mechanism works to accelerate the climate transition.
What types of financial contributions qualify?
Value chain projects: Projects that support the transition to clean energy, low carbon materials, energy efficient manufacturing, low carbon shipping, and more.
Beyond value chain projects: Projects like verified carbon and clean energy credits around the world may be eligible for certification if they meet vintage year, verification, and other criteria to ensure high-quality. Check out our Standard for the full list.
Other contributions: Projects that enable planning, research, and development, build capacity, support climate advocacy and climate justice initiatives.
Check out our Standard for the full list.
Reduce
1 week to develop a plan
1 to 2 years to implement
Build and implement detailed climate transition plans, and annually document progress toward emissions reductions.
We require all brands to develop specific, forward-looking reduction action plans (RAPs) to reduce emissions over the next 12-24 months. We're looking for concrete next steps your team is ready to implement.
Brands with over $100M in annual revenues are required to set science aligned reduction targets to reduce emissions ~50% by 2030.
We offer guides, templates, and tools to help you determine where, and how, you can reduce your emissions. Our network of 340+ brands is also an incredible resource for crafting your reduction action plans.
FAQs
What's a reduction plan?
A reduction action plan outlines what scope/category you’re aiming to reduce, your target, the timetable for achieving it, and how you’ll actually get it done.
How are we held accountable for reductions?
You will be required to report on your reduction progress annually. Your progress is measured in % completion for each RAP, and is included on your brand profile page on our website.
You will also be required to report on quantitative reduction progress during "checkpoint" years. More information on this is available in our Standard.
Report & Advocate
Reports are generated automatically
Time to Advocate varies
Report data and actions clearly and transparently. We believe a climate story is only credible if it’s clear, so we share your climate work in a concise, transparent format through our Certified Brand Directory.
Each brand profile page contains the following climate data:
- Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions
- Emissions intensity — your emissions relative to another business metric
- A summary of your reduction action plans, including progress to completion, and any science-aligned targets you’ve set
- Total financial contribution to the climate transition — and how it’s allocated to across different types of projects
- Your climate story: a space for you to talk about your climate work in your own words
This page is the public proof of your climate actions. By transparently reporting the details above, your impact is visible to consumers at a glance, and they can shop with confidence knowing that your initiatives are verified by an independent non-profit.
FAQs
Where will my certification details be reported?
On your Brand Profile Page, which is created as part of the certification process, and provides a clear, standardized way for customers to understand your climate work. The Page becomes part of our searchable directory and is a good resource for your sustainability reporting.
What forms of Advocacy are recommended or required?
We ask you to report on the ways your company is advocating for a just transition, including the requirement that you use your certification label in your marketing. We encourage a wide range of Advocacy activities, including employee engagement and training, lobbying, and educating your customers and suppliers.
