The scope breakdown

"Scope" is the industry word for how far out you look when counting a company's emissions — from their own building, to the power they buy, to every farm and factory that touched the product before it reached you.

What is Scope 1?

Direct operations: their factories, their trucks, their direct burn. If the company owns the smokestack, it is Scope 1. For most consumer brands this is the smallest slice — and the one most likely to appear in an ad.

What is Scope 2?

Purchased energy: the electricity and heat they buy to run operations. A brand switching its offices and plants to renewable power is cutting Scope 2. Real, worth doing, still not the main event.

What is Scope 3?

Everything upstream: the farms, ingredients, suppliers, shipping. Usually 70-90% of the real footprint — and almost never on the label. This is where the story lives. The Greenhouse Gas Protocol, which defines the three scopes, puts most of a product company's emissions in this bucket, and CDP's Global Supply Chain Report backs it with numbers: supply chain emissions average around 11.4 times operational emissions.

Why does Scope 3 decide the score?

Because a brand that talks only about its offices and delivery vans is showing you the easy part. When a company publishes real Scope 3 data — audited, with reduction targets — it is being accountable for the farms and factories where the footprint actually lives. That is why published Scope 3 data lifts the supply chain signal, and silence caps it.

What should I look for on a label?

You will almost never see the word "scope" on a package. You will see its proxies: a B Corp logo (company-level accountability), short ingredient chains, country-of-origin transparency, and named suppliers. The rules of thumb turn this into a thirty-second habit — or scan the label and let the score do it for you.