Pepsico and the Earth Institute develop new carbon calculator

For a company like PepsiCo, which oversees more than 20 brands and hundreds of different products around the world, calculating the carbon footprint of just one of its products can take weeks, and at a significant cost to the company. To save time and money, PepsiCo teamed up with researchers from Columbia University’s Earth Institute to create a tool that can measure the carbon footprint of thousands of products all at once.

The calculator... can calculate the carbon emissions of different materials and activities in a company’s supply chain and operations, and within minutes pinpoint which of these carries the largest carbon footprint.

The Pepsico tool uses data mining techniques to estimate carbon emissions for a variety of products based on the information from previously analysed materials. Pepsi is not the first to prduce a calculator in fact Danone has developed a calculator with SAP to identify the carbon emissions of individual products. Pepsi says they hope to make the tool available to other companies in the future. 

Read more about the Pepsico calculator at Green Biz