How do I count emissions for reusable IBC tote tanks?
Spread the making of each IBC over the trips it makes, then add washing and the return trip. A tote used ten times carries a tenth of its manufacturing footprint per trip. Single-use totes carry all of it on one trip.
Per trip
- Manufacturing footprint divided by trips.
- Washing water, steam and chemicals.
- Empty return transport.
Keep records
Count trips per tote from your tracking sheet. Reconditioning, a new bottle in an old cage, is a smaller hit than a new IBC.
What Senseible does here
Senseible reads the energy invoices behind the making stage into a fingerprinted Scope 1 and 2 record, and keeps material invoices on the Scope 3 trail. Material factors come from your supplier or a named database and are labelled with their source, so the product figure can be traced line by line.
Sources: GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard, GHG Protocol Corporate Standard
Last reviewed 2026-10-22.