What is Carbon20?

Carbon20 is a major new initiative to reduce our products' Total Carbon Footprint by 20% per dose by 2020. That means that we are working to ensure that, by 2020, the average carbon footprint of our global products will be 20% smaller than it is in 2007.

What is a Total Carbon Footprint?

The Total Carbon Footprint of our products is the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalents that are released across the complete product lifecycle, from the origination of the raw and packaging materials provided by our supply chain - through manufacturing, distribution, retail sale, and consumer's purchase and use of products - right through to the disposal / recycling of the products and their packaging.

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Where is our total carbon footprint?

Raw & Packaging Materials Product
Manufacturing		 Product
Distribution		 Retail
Operations		 Consumers Product & Packaging Disposal / Recycling
Raw & Packaging Materials Product Manufacturing Product Distribution Retail Operations Consumers Product & Packaging Disposal / Recycling
28.5% 2% 1.5% 2% 64% 2%
  • Largest portion in Consumer use (e.g in dishwashers / washing machines)
    We can influence this
  • Second largest portion in raw and packaging materials
    We can influence this
  • Direct impact of our operations is relatively small, but in our direct control

This approach is in line with the British Standard Institute's specification for measuring the carbon footprint of products and services, PAS 2050:2008.

How big is a 20% reduction in our products' Total Carbon Footprint?

Our 2007 Total Carbon Footprint was around 25 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents. That's around the same amount of emissions generated each year by 4.5 million average UK households, or 7.3 million medium-sized family cars.

Cutting that by 20% gives a reduction of around 5 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents a year. That's saving the same amount as the emissions generated by about 1.5 million cars in a year.

Our 2007 footprint was about
25m tonnes of CO2e a year

which is the same emissions as ...
4.5 million UK households

or emissions from ...
7.3 million family cars

A 20% saving on that is about...
5m tonnes of CO2e a year

which is like saving the C02e from ...
0.9 million UK households

or saving the CO2e from ...
About 1.5 million family cars