Every net-zero pledge, carbon report and BRSR disclosure rests on the same foundation: the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the most widely used standard for measuring corporate emissions. Its central idea is to sort emissions into three "scopes" by how directly your organisation causes them.
Scope 1: what you burn
Direct emissions from sources you own or control.
- Fuel burned in boilers, furnaces and diesel generators
- Fuel used by company-owned vehicles
- Process emissions from industrial activities
- Leaks of refrigerant gases from air-conditioning and cooling systems
Scope 1 is usually the easiest to measure, since it comes from fuel purchase records and equipment logs, and the most directly in your control.
Scope 2: what you buy to power yourself
Indirect emissions from purchased electricity, steam, heating and cooling.
The emissions happen at the power plant, but they exist because you consumed the energy. In India, where a large share of grid electricity still comes from coal, Scope 2 is often a big part of an office or factory's footprint.
The GHG Protocol asks companies to report Scope 2 in two ways:
- Location-based: using the average emission factor of the grid you draw from.
- Market-based: reflecting the energy you have chosen to buy, such as renewable power purchase agreements or green tariffs.
Scope 3: everything else in your value chain
All other indirect emissions, upstream and downstream. The GHG Protocol divides Scope 3 into 15 categories, including:
- Purchased goods and services
- Capital goods
- Upstream transport and distribution
- Waste generated in operations
- Business travel and employee commuting
- Use of sold products
- End-of-life treatment of sold products
For most companies Scope 3 is by far the largest share of the total footprint, often the large majority. It is also the hardest to measure, because the data sits with suppliers, customers and waste handlers.
Where waste fits
Waste shows up in Scope 3 twice: the waste your operations generate (category 5) and the waste your products become at end of life (category 12). Waste sent to landfill decomposes and releases methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than CO₂ over the short term.
That makes better waste management one of the more tangible levers on Scope 3:
- Segregating at source keeps organic waste out of landfill and makes composting or biogas possible.
- Recycling displaces virgin material production, which is often energy-intensive.
- Better data on what is collected and where it goes replaces rough estimates with measured numbers.
Getting started
- Set your boundary. Decide which sites, entities and activities are in scope.
- Start with Scopes 1 and 2. Gather fuel and electricity data monthly and apply documented emission factors.
- Screen Scope 3. Estimate all 15 categories roughly, then invest in better data for the biggest ones.
- Pick a base year and keep your methods consistent so reductions are real, not artefacts of changing maths.
- Act on the hotspots. Measurement only matters if it changes decisions.
3R ZeroWaste helps organisations with the measurement and the action, turning waste and resource data into emissions insight, and everyday participation into reductions you can verify.
