"The concept of carbon handprint is relatively new. We are more familiar with the concept of carbon footprint. Yet, when looking at sustainability, it’s becoming more and more important to look at broader systems. If we only focus on the footprint, we might miss the big picture of why a product exists in the first place and how it has the potential to deliver emission reductions in other areas. If the emissions a product can reduce are actually bigger than the footprint, that product is good for climate. That’s the handprint.
The speaker will introduce the novel concept of carbon handprint and show through an example how to apply it to packaging. The speaker will also cover the linkage between handprint and lifecycle assessment (LCA) studies. LCA is the basic methodology that’s applied when calculating handprint, and there are different impact categories in different sustainability areas.
Stora Enso has been an early adopter of the handprint measurement, collaborating with universities, research institutes and our customers to help develop these methods. Right now, handprint calculation is most advanced on the climate and carbon side, but it gets more complicated when you look at calculating things like circularity and social impacts.