Episode 34: Decarbonizing Your Products with Michelle Bonanno from GreenCircle Certified
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Decarbonizing your products is necessary for large-scale carbon emissions reduction. In this episode, Tad and Julianna sit down with Michelle Bonanno, Vice President of Operations and Certification Officer at GreenCircle Certified, to discuss the different steps a company could take to reduce the carbon footprint of their products in the raw material and manufacturing stages, how to use Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to demonstrate the carbon footprint reductions from the original product to the new version, the types of renewable energy and carbon-free electricity that contribute to carbon footprint reduction in products, how a company can better understand if their product qualifies for a carbon footprint reduction of greater than 1%, what initiatives do not count toward product-level carbon footprint reductions, which third-party certifications highlight carbon footprint reductions in products, how carbon footprint reduction is represented on GreenCircle Certified Environmental Facts (CEF) Multi-Attribute labels, and more.
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If a company were to make some changes to the product, how would greencircle verify those changes? What steps would the company need to take to make changes in the raw material stage?
In the raw material stage we would be looking directly at the product's design. We would want to make sure that it is still the same product providing the same functionality. Then we are looking for improvements that they made in the raw materials to either reduce the amount of raw materials through dematerialization or to use a different raw material with a lower carbon footprint. For instance, they can switch to a recycled content raw material rather than a virgin raw material and that would directly reduce the carbon footprint of the product.”
How would a company demonstrate the carbon footprint reduction from the original product to the new version?
“It would be like a partial life cycle assessment. We would be looking for the data set, which then takes the type of raw material and puts an emissions value on it. There are various data sets that companies can use. We would be looking for documentation, assumptions, the methodology that the company is using to show us what carbon emissions value they are attributing to the raw material.”
what would the requirements be for a carbon footprint reduction in the material stage on a typical Certified Environmental Facts (CEF) label?
“GreenCircle’s Certified Environmental Facts (CEF) label does require at minimum one product attribute which would be the carbon footprint reduction attribute but also one manufacturing attribute. So wherever the product is made, we need at least one manufacturing attribute for each facility. That can be energy use reduction, water use reduction, waste reduction, or waste diversion from landfill. We can also highlight the use of renewable or carbon-free electricity at the facility.”
In the manufacturing stage, what changes need to be made to the operation of the facility and how does that relate back to the product?
“For the manufacturing stage, we would be looking for reductions in carbon emissions at the production facility. So all of their types of energy use. We would be looking for conservation measures that they implemented against a previous baseline year. Whether they are reducing their energy use or they switched to renewable electricity or carbon-free electricity, we would be looking for documentation and verification of those changes and implemented conservation measures. Then we would determine the carbon emissions reduction at the manufacturing facility and very similar to a life cycle assessment we would apply that to the product in the manufacturing stage of the production of that product.”
ABOUT Michelle bonanno, PMP, MBA, LEED Green Associate
Michelle is the Vice President of Operations and Certification Officer at GreenCircle Certified, LLC. Michelle came to GreenCircle with years of engineering and project management experience in the nuclear industry. She also has a focus on continuous process improvement for the benefit of both GreenCircle and our clients. Michelle graduated from Bucknell University with a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering and from Villanova University with a Master of Business Administration. Michelle is a certified Project Management Professional and a LEED Green Associate.
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