What is Scope 3 emissions?

If you tried to draw a line around everything your organisation touches - every supplier who delivers to you, every business trip, every product that leaves your building, every person commuting to work - you'd end up with a web that stretches far beyond what you can see from your office window. That web is Scope 3.

Scope 3 emissions are all the indirect emissions that happen because of your organisation's activities, but not directly under your control. These ripples flow in two directions from your organisation - upstream from all the things that come to you, and downstream from everything that leaves. Think of it like this: imagine your organisation as a stone thrown into a pond. Scope 1 is the stone itself, Scope 2 is the first ring of ripples. Scope 3 is every other ripple spreading across the entire pond.

Before anything reaches your organisation, emissions have already been created getting it there:

• • Manufacturing the products you purchase
• • People travelling to work each day
• • Business trips and work-related travel
• • Deliveries arriving at your premises
• • Disposing of your waste

After your products or services leave, the emissions story continues:

• • Customers using what you've provided
• • Transportation getting products to customers
• • What happens when products reach end-of-life
• • Your products becoming components in other products

Here's something that often surprises people: for most organisations, Scope 3 makes up around 80% of their total emissions footprint. For service organisations, it's often over 90%. You're dealing with a vast network of relationships where you have influence rather than control.

What makes Scope 3 fundamentally different is that meaningful understanding requires working with others. You can't measure or influence these emissions alone - it requires conversations with suppliers, customers, and everyone in between. This collaborative aspect can feel daunting, but it's also where you start to see your organisation's true sustainability footprint and your connections to the broader economy.

Understanding Scope 3 reveals how your organisation sits within a much larger system of sustainability impact. While Scope 1 and 2 show emissions closely tied to your operations, Scope 3 shows how your choices influence emissions across entire supply chains and product lifecycles. This bigger picture view often reveals that your organisation's most significant sustainability impact happens well beyond your immediate operations.