How do I calculate the carbon footprint of a glass bottle?

Most of a glass bottle comes from melting: divide the furnace fuel and the plant electricity by good bottles packed, then add the batch materials. Soda ash and limestone also release CO2 as they melt, so count that process CO2 separately from fuel.

Melting and forming

• Furnace fuel (natural gas, furnace oil or producer gas) per month.
• Electric boosting, forming machines and compressed air.
• Annealing lehr and coating.

Batch and packing

• Sand, soda ash, limestone and cullet by weight.
• Process CO2 from soda ash and limestone in the batch.
• Pallets, shrink wrap and dividers.

Per bottle

Report per bottle with its weight and cullet share. More cullet in the batch lowers both melting energy and process CO2.

Worked example: glass bottle unit per bottle (one month)

• PNG: 400,000 SCM x 2.05 = 820,000 kg CO2
• Electricity: 250,000 kWh x 0.710 = 177,500 kg CO2
• Bottles packed: 2,000,000
• Plant total: 997,500 / 2,000,000 = 0.499 kg CO2 per bottle
• Add batch process CO2 and packing 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.

• Product carbon footprint calculator
• Packaged drinking water footprint
• Soft drink footprint
• Ceramics industry

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.