What is the PAS 2050 Standard?

Climate change isn’t going away, but on the plus side – more and more new legislation and standards are being created in order to cope with global warming, and one of those might be the PAS 2050 standard.

‍What is the PAS 2050 standard, and how could it help companies to better measure and manage their carbon footprint?

PAS 2050 a standard that can help your company to better measure their environmental impact across all of their various business activities, services, and life cycles of your products and their lifetime contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. Serving as the world’s first carbon footprint standard, the PAS 2050 is dedicated towards making the carbon footprint of both products and services equal to one another so that companies can improve their efficiency, reduce their emissions, and improve their supply chains. Overall, acquiring a PAS 2050 can help companies to determine their environmental impact by monitoring the life-cycle of their products – and ultimately help to reduce their overall emissions.

The life cycle of a product is the amount of time from which a product is first produced until it is introduced to the customer to purchase the product itself, and eventually disposed of after its use. The life cycle of a product is categorized into four different stages: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.

When the product is created and put on the market for the first time, this is known as the introduction stage. In the introduction stage of the life cycle of a product, the success of the product in terms of sales or marketing is yet to be determined – making the goal of the introduction stage to simply increase awareness for the product itself. The second stage in the life-cycle of a product is the growth stage, which is where interest in the product increases.In the growth stage, it is typical for sales to suddenly skyrocket and for companies to find financial success. The third stage in the life-cycle of a product is the maturity stage, which is when a product is maintaining its success – but is no longer growing at the exponential rate as it was in the growth stage. The final stage of the lifecycle of a product is the decline stage – which is when customers start to lose interest in the product and sales begin to drop. 

When it comes to monitoring the life-cycle of a product, having both a good marketing and management team can prove extremely useful. A PAS 2050 can also help a company  monitor the life-cycle of a product to create the most optimal advertisements and price points, as well as any adjustments that can be made in order to appeal to consumers. In the case of an ISO 14067, it helps a company determine the sustainability and carbon footprint created throughout the product’s life cycle.

The benefits of implementing a PAS 2050 are exponential. Ultimately, adding the most recent version of a PAS 2050, otherwise known as a PAS 2050:2011 – can help your company to better manage their greenhouse gas emissions from your various suppliers, help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the future, make your company more competitive as more enterprises and investors expect companies to share data on the lifecycle of their products, improve your design to become more sustainable and adhere to the new desires of both investors and customers by providing low-carbon products and services, increase the use of low-carbon suppliers, and more. 

In addition to creating an overall more sustainable business that aims to reduce emissions and makes tracking carbon footprints a priority, acquiring a PAS 2050 can also help businesses to meet their customer’s environmental expectations, build greater trust and transparency between both investors and customers further accelerating long-term business success, decrease the amount of customer complaints and ultimately improve customer service satisfaction amongst customers.

Just like the ISO series, PAS 2050 is a part of an entire series of PAS standards – and it can often be difficult to decipher which PAS standard means what. 

The PAS 2060 standard is the only standard in the PAS series that is recognized as an international standard for carbon neutrality. In short, the PAS 2060 was initially based off of the PAS 2050 – as the PAS 2050 served as the first standard to be approved by the British Standards Institution as a guideline to reduce emissions.The PAS 2050 is older than both the PAS 2060 and the PAS 2080, making the PAS 2050 the first piece of framework for companies seeking to measure their carbon footprint. The PAS 2060 was initially released in 2010, whereas the PAS 2080 was initially released in 2016. 

However, each standard in the PAS series tackles a different component to reducing emissions and promoting carbon neutrality. For instance, the PAS 2060 is a standard that strives to incentivize businesses to illustrate their efforts towards carbon neutrality by establishing greater transparency between their customers and potential investors as an attempt to bypass allegations that could deter them from success, such as greenwashing.  Similar to the PAS 2050, the PAS 2060 can assist companies to create a personalized plan on how to measure, reduce, and offset their carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions. 

Contrary to both the PAS 2050 and PAS 2060, the PAS 2080 tackles reducing emissions in another manner – as it encourages businesses to improve transparency by helping businesses to design their infrastructure to be more carbon-friendly. The PAS 2080 helps to achieve this by setting limits on how buildings are to be manufactured in order to adhere to the spirit of the standards in the PAS series themselves – to help companies better manage their carbon emissions and ultimately aid in the fight against climate change. 

The PAS 2050, PAS 2060 and PAS 2080 were all published by the British Standards Institution – but the PAS 2050 is the oldest with the PAS 2080 serving as the newest standard in the series. 

👉All three standards in the PAS series can help companies to reduce their carbon emissions and improve transparency for greater customer satisfaction – but each standard in the PAS series  is more specific than the PAS 2060.

The PAS 2050 is strikingly similar to an accreditation in the ISO series – the ISO 14067. 

The ISO 14067 is very similar to the PAS 2050 as both serve as guidelines to help companies identify the carbon footprint over the entire life-span of their products. However, there are a few differences between the PAS 2050 and the ISO 14067.

The ISO 14067, unlike the PAS 2050 (although it is recognized in the U.S., Europe, and China), is internationally recognized which can be used world-wide in order to certify carbon footprint measured products and services. While the PAS 2050 is older than the ISO 14067, having been released in 2008 and 2013 respectively, an ISO 14067 might be more productive for your company if you are seeking global, commercial success. Also, ISO 14067 provides a guide for tracking the life-cycle of a product that is in line with the thirteenth Sustainable Development Goal in the UNGC’s Agenda 2030. 

👉Overall, while both a PAS 2050 and an ISO 14067 can help a company to measure the greenhouse gas emissions produced with their products and services, and ISO 14067 might prove more successful if you’re seeking international business success and want to simultaneously adhere to the sustainable development goals addressed in the UNGC’s Agenda 2030.

ISO certifications are known to require large amounts of paperwork proving a company’s dedication to the environmental task at hand. Is the PAS 2050 just as difficult to acquire?

In order to implement a PAS 2050 into your company, two major steps are required: providing a detailed report and creating a viable action plan to measure the carbon footprint of products and services in the future.

For the first part of incorporating a PAS 2050 into your business, a detailed benchmarking report is required. This should include an estimated calculation of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with your products, a report of where in the value chain the most greenhouse gas emissions are produced from, how your company divides emissions in order to comply with the recommendations from other projects, such as the Carbon Disclosure Project, and areas in which are subject to be altered in your business model in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

After this detailed report is completed, it is then imperative to create a new plan in accordance with the data provided in the report. The action plan should include various audits, specified emission-reduction goals that are attainable given the new data regarding current emissions provided, and how employees of the company can implement these changes as well in order to yield effective cost savings in addition to reduced emissions.

Is the detailed report and action plan for a PAS 2050 worth the efforts?

The value behind the PAS 2050, measuring the carbon footprint of a product or service over the course of its entire lifespan, is one of the most valuable things a company seeking to reduce emissions and improve upon sustainability can do. 

In the long run, a PAS 2050 can help your company influence customers to purchase lower-carbon emitting products (not just within your own company, which will ultimately help in the fight against global warming), cultivate a stronger corporate social responsibility or CSR program, increase investor interest, improve business revenue, and reduce emissions. The PAS 2050 is recognized around the world, including the U.SChina, and countries in the European Union – making it a great standard to follow for any company seeking to reduce the carbon footprint of their products and services.

However, it’s important to note that you shouldn’t stop with the guidelines provided by standards like the PAS 2050 – but strive to meet the standards of several other accreditations, such as by improving your environmental management system with the ISO 14001 or subscribing to the sustainable development goals provided by the UNGC.

Climate change will continue to be a collective fight, and just as two heads are better than one – striving and acquiring multiple environmental standards and accreditations is better than adhering to just the PAS 2050 alone.

If reading this article the PAS 2050 standard has made you interested in reducing your carbon emissions to further fight against climate change – Greenly can help you!

Greenly can help you make an environmental change for the better, starting with a carbon footprint assessment to know how much carbon emissions your company produces.