The request often arrives as a short email from a customer: please send us the carbon footprint of your product, verified by a third party. Two lines that trigger several weeks of work.
What that email calls a product carbon footprint has a precise name in standardization: ISO 14067. It is the text defining how to quantify and report the greenhouse gas emissions attached to a product or a service.
What ISO 14067 actually covers
The standard builds on the life cycle assessment principles set out in ISO 14040 and ISO 14044, but keeps a single indicator: climate change. Where a full LCA also examines water, acidification or resource depletion, ISO 14067 focuses on kilos of CO2 equivalent per functional unit.
The boundary can run from cradle to grave, meaning from raw material extraction to end of life, or stop at the factory gate for a partial footprint. Both are compliant, provided you state which one was used, which plenty of studies forget to make clear.
How it differs from a corporate carbon footprint
A corporate footprint covers an entity over a year. A product footprint covers a functional unit, for example one square meter of flooring installed for fifty years, or one thousand liters of drinking water delivered.
That difference has practical consequences. The data comes from different departments, the level of detail is far finer, and the result is never the corporate footprint divided by the number of units sold. The two exercises feed each other, they do not replace each other.
How it differs from an EPD
An environmental declaration such as an EPD, or an FDES in French construction, covers around a dozen indicators, follows product category rules and complies with a verification and publication framework, notably EN 15804 for construction products.
ISO 14067 is lighter and more targeted. It fits when a customer asks for the carbon of one product, when a team is designing a new reference and wants to compare options, or when a company is preparing the ground before committing to a full declaration.
The five points that derail a study
A badly framed functional unit comes first. Counting a kilo of product rather than a service delivered leads to comparing things that do not fulfill the same function, and makes the result useless for eco-design.
Allocation rules come next. When one process makes several products, impacts have to be split. Subdivision, mass allocation, economic allocation: the three routes give different results, and the choice has to be justified, documented and tested for sensitivity. It is the most debated topic in review.
Cut-off rules follow. Excluding minor flows is accepted, provided you state the threshold used and check that cumulative exclusions stay marginal.
Biogenic carbon, fourth point, requires emissions and removals to be reported separately. Merging them with fossil carbon in a single total blurs the reading and weakens the study.
Electricity last. The mix used for a production site sometimes changes the order of magnitude of the result, and the logic applied has to be consistent with the emission factors used elsewhere in the study.
The critical review: what it does, when it is required
LCA standards require a critical review by an independent third party whenever a comparative assertion is disclosed to the public. Put plainly: as soon as you want to say publicly that your product emits less than a competitor's, a third party must have examined the study.
Outside that case the review stays voluntary, and plenty of buyers ask for it anyway in their tenders. It then acts as a guarantee of rigor before the figure enters their own reporting.
A reviewer always looks at the same things. Consistency between the stated goal, the functional unit and the system boundaries. Data traceability, source by source. Justification of allocations and cut-offs. The presence of a sensitivity analysis on the structuring assumptions. And whether the intended claims match what the study actually demonstrates.
Our consultants work on both sides: running studies, and carrying out independent critical reviews for manufacturers who need theirs validated.
How long it takes, and what it is for
A product footprint on a well documented reference takes a few weeks. The time goes into collection from suppliers and process modeling, not into the calculation itself.
The intended use sets the level of rigor. A figure meant for an internal eco-design trade-off can live with secondary data. A figure meant for a public tender, an external communication or a competitive comparison needs primary data and a review. Settle that question at the start, because it drives both budget and schedule.
This work sits within our LCA and eco-design offering, and can be partly funded by public schemes dedicated to eco-design.
Frequently asked questions
ISO 14040 and 14044 set the general framework for life cycle assessment across all impacts. ISO 14067 applies that framework to a single indicator, climate change, and adds the rules specific to a product carbon footprint, notably on biogenic carbon.
It becomes mandatory as soon as a comparative assertion is disclosed to the public, meaning as soon as you publicly claim to do better than a competing product. Outside that case it stays voluntary, though many buyers require it in their tenders.
No. Dividing the company total by the number of units sold ignores the differences in process, material and use between references. The corporate assessment helps with scoping and collection, but a product footprint requires its own modeling, with a defined functional unit.
It depends on what the specification asks for. In construction, a registered EPD is often expected, since it covers several indicators and follows a strict verification framework. Outside construction, an ISO 14067 study is usually enough, sometimes with a critical review attached.