WDK targets CO2 tracking across rubber value-chain

Frankfurt, Germany – The WDK has entered a cooperation agreement with Together for Sustainability (TfS), an international initiative to raise CSR reporting standards in the chemicals industry. 

According to the German rubber manufacturers’ association, non-profit TfS will create guidelines for its member companies and their suppliers to measure product carbon footprint (PCF).

The cooperation, it said, will address challenges around providing “reliable and comparable figures” for Scope 3 carbon footprint – emissions not produced by the company and created across the value-chain.

By creating uniform global standards within supply-chains, the guidelines will enhance transparency across the industry, said a 9 June statement from Frankfurt-based WDK.

The improved data will also enable all parties, including suppliers, processors and OEMs, to “reliably evaluate” sustainability practices and optimise them if necessary.

This will “create acceptance among the major clients - especially the automotive manufacturers - with regard to the input data for our own carbon footprint calculations,” said  Boris Engelhardt, WDK secretary general.

Ideally, Engelhardt emphasised, the TfS guideline should become the standard for product carbon footprint calculations for all WKD suppliers.

According to Dr Veronika Beer, head of sustainable development at WDK, raw materials represent a significant share of the carbon footprint involved in the manufacture of rubber products.

"This is usually higher than the contribution to emissions made by the production,” said Beer, noting the need for reliable CO2 data in improving the carbon footprint of rubber products.

The agreement with WDK "marks a major step towards the establishment of a cohesive PCF standard for chemical, plastics and rubber raw materials,” said Alessandro Pistillo of the TfS programme.

The standards, said Pistillo, will work across “multiple downstream application segments”, contributing to the achievement of transparency and comparability in GHG emission accounting.