Scope 3 in three steps for procurement teams

Measuring purchased-goods Scope 3 often sounds like a long project. It does not have to be. Three steps get you to a first useful result.

1. PrioritiseWhich purchases weigh the most or your customers ask for.
2. CalculateWith physical factors from the technical documentation.
3. ImproveWith primary data from key suppliers.

Step 1: which purchases weigh most?

Not all purchases matter equally. Start by identifying the categories and products that weigh most or the ones your customers ask about. A spend analysis can help you order the list, as long as you only use it to prioritise, as we explain in why spend penalises decarbonisation.

Step 2: how is each purchase calculated?

With physical factors, from the technical documentation of the product you buy: drawings, data sheets, bill of materials. That way the result depends on what the product is and not on what it costs. When the documentation is unclear, the most conservative factor is applied.

Step 3: how do you improve over time?

With primary data from key suppliers: their energy, material origin and transport. Each piece of primary data replaces a conservative assumption with a measurement. You do not need to have them all to start.

What do you get?

A result per product or supplier, with a breakdown you can review and reuse. The Scope 3 for purchased goods solution describes it in more detail, and the guide on how to calculate Category 1 adds the step by step.

What do you need to provide?

Very little at first: a list of the purchases you want to measure and access to the technical documentation of those products (drawings, data sheets, bill of materials or purchase lines from your ERP). With Xain, a procurement Scope 3 takes less than 10 minutes of your work. Your suppliers do not have to fill in questionnaires to get started.

Common mistakes

• Trying to measure everything at once. A first result on the purchases that weigh the most is more useful than a project with no end.
• Waiting for suppliers to respond. Start with the documentation you already have and improve afterwards.
• Using spend to decide. It is for prioritising, not for choosing suppliers: read why spend-based calculation penalises decarbonisation.
• Not keeping the breakdown. Without it you cannot explain or improve the result.

Checklist before you start

• List of purchase categories or products to measure.
• Access to drawings, data sheets or bills of materials for the most relevant ones.
• A contact in procurement and another in sustainability.
• A date to review the first result and decide next steps.

What does the result look like?

A result per product or supplier, with its breakdown and traceability down to the factor of each node. With it you can rank your purchases by real impact, see which suppliers are worth asking for primary data, and answer anyone asking for your company’s Scope 3. It fits with the CSRD and ESRS E1 and with the GHG Protocol Scope 3 standard.

What can you do this week?

Ask your procurement team for a list of the ten or twenty purchases that weigh the most, by amount or volume, and mark those that might have technical documentation at hand. That list is the starting point of step 1 and can be prepared in an afternoon.

Then pick two or three products from that list for the first calculation. Ideally mix one that weighs a lot with one your customers have asked about, so the first result serves two purposes: prioritising and answering. With that in hand you can decide whether the next step is to widen the scope or to ask the most relevant suppliers for primary data.

How does Xain help?

Xain’s procurement Scope 3 solution calculates with physical factors, with a method verified by LRQA, and can be fed by email, through the web platform or via API/ERP. If you want to start, write to us.