How Ocean Bottle increased Scope 3 emissions measurement accuracy across its supply chain with Sweep

Background

Ocean Bottle is a B Corp-certified reusable bottle brand.  Made from 90% recycled stainless steel and non-composite materials, the bottles are recyclable, and partly made from recycled ocean-bound plastic. For the sale of each bottle, the equivalent of 1,000 plastic bottles in weight are collected before they can enter the ocean globally in coastal areas where plastic pollution is worst.

Challenge

Ocean Bottle experienced rapid growth which quickly revealed its current measurement methods were no longer meeting its needs. In addition to this, Ocean Bottle has no Scope 1 or 2 emissions, as it does not own any link in its supply chain, or any of its premises. This meant that the Impact team needed to focus on notoriously complex Scope 3 emissions, which are much more challenging to measure accurately without appropriate tools.

Finally, to increase accuracy and enable Ocean Bottle to act on granular data, the company needed to move from spend-based emissions measurements, to activity-based.

Solution

Ocean Bottle selected Sweep, a comprehensive sustainability data management tool, for its ability to convert complex measurement data into a clearly readable tree structure, identify emission hotspots, and offer advanced reduction modelling scenarios. Its focus on value chain emissions was of particular importance to Ocean Bottle.

Sweep’s hotspot-identification functionality enabled Ocean Bottle to see a growing problem with its shipping and air freight emissions.

Ocean Bottle has historically only resorted to air freight for unavoidable exceptions, but points out that the environmental impacts of this transportation method are much greater per unit shipped – and therefore a key area upon which to focus reduction efforts.

The Impact team worked with shipping partners and the company’s own Operations Team to track 100% of its air freight shipments using activity-based measurements. Sweep’s software enabled Ocean Bottle to set up a clear internal process to accurately measure air freight emissions based on weight, departure and destination. In order to act on this data, the company created and implemented an air freight budget to be shared across departments.

From there, Ocean Bottle was able to apply the same accurate measurement process across the rest of its value chain links, effectively managing its Scope 3 emissions.

As a direct result, Ocean Bottle has been able to limit its air freight emissions to 45,134 kg CO2e in 2023, which is 3.6% below its own target limit. Air freight emissions now equate to just 5% of Ocean Bottle’s total transportation emissions for the year. 

This process was replicated across several other value chain links, allowing Ocean Bottle to measure 78% of 2023 emissions with activity-based tracks. 

This drastically increased the accuracy of its carbon footprint measurement, and has led to the company logging a decrease in emissions compared to 2022.