How do I calculate the carbon footprint of ayurvedic medicines per kg?
Add the herbs, ghee, jaggery, honey or oils in the formulation, then decoction and drying fuel, grinding and tablet or syrup filling electricity, and the bottles and cartons. Divide by kilograms or litres packed. Boiling fuel and packaging are often the largest plant lines.
Ingredients
- Dried herbs and roots: count kilograms bought per batch.
- Ghee, oils, jaggery or honey in ghritam, tailam, arishtam and lehyam forms: ghee carries a dairy footprint.
- Excipients for tablets and capsules.
Process energy
- Decoction boilers or firewood furnaces: firewood CO2 is biogenic and reported separately; LPG or diesel is Scope 1.
- Dryers, pulverisers and blenders.
- Tablet presses, capsule fillers and bottle lines.
Per kg or per litre
Report by dosage form: per kg of churna or tablets, per litre of arishtam or syrup. Glass bottles add a lot per litre, so state the pack.
Worked example: ayurvedic unit per kg (one month)
- Decoction LPG: 2,000 kg x 2.98 = 5,960 kg CO2
- Electricity: 10,000 kWh x 0.710 = 7,100 kg CO2
- Product packed (kg): 20,000
- Plant total: 13,060 / 20,000 = 0.653 kg CO2 per kg
- Add herbs, ghee or oils, and bottles for the full figure
Inputs are illustrative; use your own bills and production records.
What Senseible does here
Senseible reads the plant's electricity bills (CEA grid factor 0.710 kg CO2 per kWh, CO2 Baseline Database version 21.0) and fuel invoices (IPCC 2006 defaults) into a fingerprinted Scope 1 and 2 record, the plant-level input to a per-unit figure. Bought-in materials go to the supplier evidence trail; product reports are self-declared drafts.
Sources: GHG Protocol Product Standard, ISO 14067:2018, Carbon footprint of products (iso.org), IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 2 Energy (fuel defaults), CEA CO2 Baseline Database, version 21.0
Last reviewed 2026-10-20.