Abstract
Many manufacturers are striving to reduce the negative impacts of their business activities, particularly with respect to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, also called “carbon emissions.” Estimates of such emissions are ubiquitously used in evaluating overall impacts of manufacturing activities. Additionally, regulations and corporate voluntary goals toward carbon emissions reductions are notably increasing. One area that still lacks methods and consensus on carbon emissions quantification is in the secondary materials marketplaces (SMMs), where more clarity is required on matters such as the allocation of these emissions given that their transactions involve multiple stakeholders. These marketplaces enable material recovery by bringing together organizations with excess and scrap materials with those that can use those materials. The SMMs are integral to implementing a circular economy (CE), as they prolong the longevity of materials in the economy further amortizing their impacts and fulfilling a fundamental premise of CE. In this work, we propose a framework to estimate the “Carbon Avoidance Measurement” (CAM) for transactions in SMMs. Then, we examine why each stakeholder’s CAM values may or may not be eligible for GHG reduction credits based on the GHG Protocol. We apply the framework to two different cases of materials transacted in an established SMM. Through this work, we also highlight the importance of such a measurement for broader CE system-level decisions, as well as the major standardization and industry-specific consensus needs for implementing such a framework.
