Office furniture carbon footprint calculator

The office furniture carbon footprint calculator estimates the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the full life-cycle of an office furniture product, from raw material extraction to end-of-life. For example, it can be incorporated into the procurement process to collect data from office furniture suppliers to generate a carbon footprint ready for comparison.

Objectives

The calculator is designed to:

provide transparent and traceable carbon footprint calculations
be robust by following the guidelines outlined by the International Standards Organization (ISO), particularly ISO 14067, and Product Category Rules (PCRs) developed by the Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association (BIFMA)

Scope

The office furniture carbon footprint calculator estimates life cycle GHG emissions of 3 office furniture product categories:

workspace products
seating products
storage products

The system boundary of the calculator covers 4 stages:

material acquisition and pre-processing
product manufacturing
distribution and use
end of life

A functional unit in life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a reference unit that enables comparability between different products and serves as the basis for evaluating their environmental performance throughout their life cycle. A functional unit specific to each product category is selected as the basis for the GHG emissions calculations.

Methodology

The calculator includes 2 paths:

Path A is a simplified path for products with pre-existing environmental product declarations (EPDs)
Path B directly calculates the life-cycle GHG emissions of products without pre-existing EPDs, based on detailed product-specific input data provided by suppliers

For Path B, the following input data are required for each office furniture product life cycle:

material acquisition and pre-processing
product manufacturing
distribution and use
product end of life

To reduce the potential burden of the carbon footprint calculator on suppliers, input data for non-core processes (that is, processes outside of the operational control of the product manufacturers) were made optional where possible. Background data for optional data inputs were aligned with the recommendations for data sources provided in the office furniture PCRs developed by BIFMA.

Ongoing development

Ongoing development and maintenance of the calculators will be undertaken based on engagement with stakeholders and other governmental departments, comments received from the public, as well as issues identified by Public Services and Procurement Canada.

More information

Contact the Green and Clean Technology Procurement Technical Team for more information: tpsgc.paachatsecologiques-apgreenprocurement.pwgsc@tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca.

Page details

2024-12-13

Language selection

Search

Office furniture carbon footprint calculator

Page details