OBO’s carbon footprint

As the awareness of sustainability grows, so does the need for reliable information on the environmental impact of products. This can be determined, for example, using a product’s carbon footprint, also known as the product carbon footprint (PCF). The carbon footprint includes the sum of all greenhouse gas emissions of a product over its entire life cycle (cradle to grave). This includes the raw materials used, manufacturing process, transportation, use and disposal. A product’s carbon footprint can be reduced by various measures directly during the manufacturing stage, forexample, by using green electricity, using sustainable raw materials, increasing the proportion of recycled materials or shortening delivery routes.

OBO is calculating the CO₂ footprint of more and more products based on the cradle-to-gate principle. This approach – the market standard applied by manufacturers – considers the life cycle of a product from the extraction of raw materials to the point at which the product leaves the factory gate. This allows us to focus specifically on the processes that we can influence and allows us to analyse and optimise their environmental impact.

We are currently able to provide this information for 5,700 OBO products via our online catalogue, and we are constantly increasing this number. This means that we can offer our customers a transparent and reliable information base – similar to the environmental product declarations (EPDs) that include almost all items in our cable support systems and also provide a fact-based information foundation for evaluating product sustainability.