What is Carbon 20?

Carbon 20 is a major new initiative to reduce our products' Total Carbon Footprint by 20% per unit by 2020. That means that we are working to ensure that, by 2020, the average carbon footprint of our global products will be 20% smaller than it is in 2007.

The Total Carbon Footprint of our products is the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalents that are released across the complete product lifecycle, from the origination of the raw and packaging materials provided by our supply chain – through manufacturing, distribution, retail sale, and consumer’s purchase and use of products – right through to the disposal / recycling of the products and their packaging.

This approach is in line with the British Standard Institute’s draft specification for measuring the carbon footprint of products and services, PAS 2050.

How big is a 20% reduction in our products' Total Carbon Footprint?

Currently, our Total Carbon Footprint is around 20 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents. That’s around the same amount of emissions generated each year by 3.6 million average UK households, or 5.7 million medium-sized family cars.

Cutting that by 20% gives a reduction of around 4 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents a year. That’s saving the same amount as the emissions generated by more than a million cars in a year.