Better planning can make a big difference for scope 3 emissions

Paper supply carbon footprint as a decision-making parameter

To achieve this, VPK called on OMP to activate its Green Planning framework within the Unison Planning™ platform. De Winter explains what this entails: “The Green Planning framework is a way of integrating sustainability criteria into our supply chain planning decision-making process. We can now, for instance, incorporate the carbon footprint of
paper supply as an additional parameter in the process. We’ve been using Unison Planning to drive our decision-making for more than ten years to maximize quality and service levels
and keep costs as low as possible. And we’re achieving great results.”

The potential of Green Planning was initially demonstrated using a trial version of the Unison Planning solution at VPK before it was put into operation and went live in November 2024.

But VPK also sources paper from third-party suppliers, ranging from global giants to small local producers. “Today the data quality differs a lot between suppliers,” says De Winter. “The global giants mostly produce clear emission numbers per plant and per product, even taking into account their own scope 3 emissions. But many of the smaller operations have limited scope 1 and scope 2 data, and no scope 3 data at all. We worked out a solution to fill in the gaps by using industry averages calculated by FEFCO. We integrated all of the gathered data in the Unison Planning™ platform where we apply penalizing factors to the CO2 intensity data paper supplier/paper grade.”

Pragmatic solutions to factor in transport emissions

Promoting emission reduction among suppliers

This example illustrates how reality-based experience is needed to get real results from Green Planning. “I’m ready to admit that we’re still learning,” says De Winter. “Our first achievement was getting greater visibility on our actual footprint. But the ultimate goal is to reduce our emissions by promoting emission reductions among our suppliers. We now have a very powerful instrument to do that. For any requested paper batch, if we have multiple potential suppliers offering equal or similar quality and service levels at a comparable price, we’ll always go for the one with the lowest proven emission volumes.” 

“In this way, we not only reduce our own emissions but also encourage suppliers to take emission reduction seriously. Any paper mill still running on fossil fuels will be out of the game soon, and the survivors will need to get better and better at it every year.”