Do I have to report indirect use-phase emissions, such as the hot water used to wash garments I sell?

No. Under the GHG Protocol Scope 3 Standard, indirect use-phase emissions, like the power a washing machine draws to heat water for your shirts or the gas used to cook your pasta, are optional in Category 11. Only direct use-phase emissions are required. If you include indirect ones, show them separately with the use scenario you assumed.

Direct and indirect use-phase: the difference

Direct use-phase emissions come from the product itself while it is used: a motor drawing power, an engine burning fuel, an air conditioner leaking refrigerant. Indirect use-phase emissions come from energy the product needs from something else during use, set by how the customer behaves.

A shirt uses no energy, but a washing machine heats water and a dryer runs to clean it. A packet of pasta needs a stove. A detergent needs warm water. A non-stick pan needs a burner. These are the textbook indirect cases.

When it is still worth reporting

• A buyer or brand asks for a full life cycle view of your product, for example in a product footprint that covers the use stage.
• Use is the largest part of the product's life cycle impact and you can influence it, for example with a cold-wash fabric or a quick-cook product.
• You plan to make a claim about lower use-stage energy and need a baseline to show it.
• If none of these applies, leaving indirect use-phase out is acceptable. Say in your method note that it was excluded as optional.

How to estimate it if you include it

1. Define a use scenario: number of uses over the product's life, energy per use and the share of that energy belonging to your product.
2. Take the scenario from a published standard, an industry study or a consumer survey for the market where the product is used, and cite it.
3. Multiply uses by energy per use by the product's share, then by the electricity or fuel factor of the country where it is used.
4. Report the result as a separate line, not inside the required Category 11 total, and label it scenario-based.

Edge cases to watch

• Exports: a garment washed in Germany uses the German grid factor, not India's.
• Washing and drying are separate steps. Say whether tumble drying is in the scenario, since many markets line dry.
• Intermediate products: if you sell fabric rather than finished garments, washing depends on what your customer makes, and the Scope 3 rules on intermediate products may let you leave the use stage out with a stated reason.

Illustrative example: T-shirts sold in India (assumptions labelled)

• Garments sold: 1,00,000 T-shirts
• Assumed scenario: 50 warm washes over life; one machine load uses 1 kWh; each T-shirt is 1/25 of a load
• Energy: 1,00,000 x 50 / 25 = 2,00,000 kWh
• Emissions at the India grid factor: 2,00,000 x 0.710 = 1,42,000 kg CO2, about 142 tonnes
• Report as optional indirect use-phase, separate from the required Category 11 total

Washes, kWh per load and garment share are illustrative. Use a cited scenario for your market, and the grid factor of the country where the garment is washed.

What Senseible does here

Senseible keeps your own fuel and electricity records, calculated with the CEA grid factor and IPCC 2006 defaults, which form the operational part of any footprint you send a buyer. A use-stage scenario you add stays your own labelled assumption, reported apart from those document-based figures.

• Category 11: use of sold products
• Downstream categories for intermediate products
• Manufacturing Scope 3 in India

Sources: GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard (2011), Category 11 minimum boundary, GHG Protocol Technical Guidance for Calculating Scope 3 Emissions (2013), Category 11, CEA CO2 Baseline Database, version 21.0

Last reviewed 2026-10-18.