Businesses selling food and drink have moved a step closer to agreeing a standard way of measuring emissions from their supply chains after more than 100 organisations joined a new working group.

Wrap has convened the organisations to develop a definitive measurement framework for consistent scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) reporting in food and drink. It plans to publish a set of measurement and reporting protocols for UK food and drink businesses later this year.

The protocol will have a consistent accounting and reporting method that builds on the GHG Protocol, SBTi and Gold Standard and is specifically interpreted for food and drink businesses.

The working group has been established in response to the challenges businesses have faced in calculating emissions embedded in their supply chains, particularly the ingredients they use, which account for up to 90% of all emissions in the food and drink sector for a typical business.

“There is currently no consistent way of quantifying supply chain emissions and businesses either have to commission expensive life cycle analysis for each ingredient or use average values from a variety of contrasting public data sets. This is a burden for suppliers and makes it impossible to compare the information provided by different businesses,” explained Wrap chief executive Marcus Gover.

Gover said the development of a common method for measuring scope 3 emissions and an agreed set of emission factors would also enable clear eco labelling to be developed that can be trusted by consumers.

In April, Wrap will publish a draft document for practical piloting of the protocol. It will also publish the best publicly available data sources for food and drink ingredients to help businesses.