My product footprint leaves out a few small inputs. How does the Partnership for Carbon Transparency (PACT) method let me do that, and what is the 3% limit?

PACT lets you leave out an input only if you disclose and justify it, and all exclusions together shall stay under 3% of the product footprint's total cradle-to-gate emissions. Test with a worst-case guess: if even a high estimate stays small, the input can go.

The rule in plain words

PACT says companies should seek to include every process from raw material to your gate. They may exclude a process if they disclose and justify it by how little it matters. PACT says companies may run a screening in the most conservative case, for example a sensitivity analysis. It works like weighing a parcel on the heaviest setting: if it is still light, it is light. In aggregate, exclusions shall be less than 3% of the total cradle-to-gate emissions.

Steps

1. List every input to one unit of product, including the ones you have no figure for.
2. For each unknown input, take its quantity per unit and multiply by a deliberately high emission figure.
3. Add those high estimates together.
4. Divide by the product footprint with those estimates added.
5. Under 3%: you may leave them out. State the percentage, and describe which inputs you left out and how you estimated them.
6. Over 3%: PACT's own example says companies shall ensure at least one of the materials is assessed and included, so the total stays under the limit.

What you must send with it

Companies shall provide the percentage of emissions excluded. They may also describe the excluded processes and the estimation method. If nothing major changes in the product, PACT says the first screening can be reused in later revisions.

If a supplier left things out too

When you use a supplier's own product footprint, PACT says you shall take into account the percentage that supplier exempted. Where that upstream figure is not available, PACT accepts up to 3% excluded in total as an uncertainty it will revise as the market develops.

A steel utensil, example numbers

• Known inputs and energy: 3.80 kilograms (kg) of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per piece
• Unknown: cutting oil, high estimate 0.05 kg; packing tape, high estimate 0.04 kg. Together 0.09 kg
• Share: 0.09 / (3.80 + 0.09) = 0.09 / 3.89 = 2.3%. Under 3%, so both can be left out, with the percentage stated
• If the high estimates were 0.10 and 0.08 kg: 0.18 / (3.80 + 0.18) = 0.18 / 3.98 = 4.5%. Over 3%, so assess at least one of them

Numbers are examples. Dividing by the footprint with the estimates added is our reading of "total cradle-to-gate emissions".

What Senseible does here

Senseible reads fuel invoices and electricity bills into monthly records. Estimating small inputs you have no figure for is your own step. Senseible builds figures in the PACT exchange format as a custom integration, on request.

• Machines, buildings and travel under PACT
• What a PACT verifier checks
• When your supplier data is unknown
• Footprints for hundreds of products

Sources: PACT Methodology Version 3.0, World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)

Last reviewed 2026-11-07. Rule is from PACT Methodology 3.0, section 3.3.1.2 and Box 6. PACT says it will revise the 3% acceptance as the market develops.