Is the truck that takes my factory waste away counted in Category 5?

It is optional. The Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol says you may include emissions from carrying your waste in vehicles run by a third party, using the Category 4 methods. Before you add it, check whether your waste emission factor already includes transport, so the same kilometres are not counted twice.

What the guidance says

In the GHG Protocol's Category 5 guidance, your Scope 3 emissions from waste come from the Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions of the companies that treat it. Companies may optionally include emissions from the transportation of waste in vehicles operated by a third party. To report it, the guidance sends you to the Category 4 methods.

The same guidance says waste-type-specific emission factors should include end-of-life processes only, and that they may include transport. That last word is where double counting starts.

Look at your factor before you add the truck

• The factor says it includes transport to the facility: do not add a transport line.
• The factor covers treatment only (landfill, incineration, recycling): you may add transport, and should say so.
• The factor sheet does not say: ask the publisher, or leave transport out and state that in your method note.

If you add it

1. Collect tonnes per trip and the distance from your gate to the treatment site, from the contractor's invoice or weighbridge slip.
2. Use a Category 4 method: fuel used per trip if the contractor shares it, otherwise tonnes x distance x an emission factor for the vehicle type.
3. Keep it on its own line, so a reader can remove it and compare with a company that left transport out.
4. Write one sentence in the report: transport of waste is included, and how it was calculated.

Your own truck is a different case

The option in the guidance is for vehicles operated by a third party. If your own vehicle carries the waste, its fuel is already in your Scope 1 and does not go in Category 5 as well.

Example: 120 t of factory waste a year to landfill (example figures)

• Example landfill factor, treatment only: 0.40 t CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) per tonne, so 120 x 0.40 = 48.0 t CO2e
• Transport at 45 km: 120 t x 45 km = 5,400 tonne-km, at an example 0.10 kg CO2e per tonne-km = 540 kg, or 0.54 t CO2e
• Category 5 with transport: 48.0 + 0.54 = 48.54 t CO2e. Transport is about 1% of it
• If the treatment site were 400 km away: 120 x 400 x 0.10 = 4,800 kg, or 4.8 t CO2e, about 9%
• If the factor already included transport, adding the 0.54 t would count it twice

Example factors, not published values. Use factors from a named source and edition.

What Senseible does here

Senseible keeps waste contractor invoices in its separate Scope 3 supplier evidence trail and shows a figure only when the printed quantity and unit match an approved factor. Whether to add the transport leg is your choice, and you note it in the report.

• Calculating Category 5 for factory waste
• Scrap sold for recycling
• Supplier emissions evidence

Sources: GHG Protocol, Technical Guidance for Calculating Scope 3 Emissions, Category 5 (waste generated in operations), GHG Protocol, Technical Guidance for Calculating Scope 3 Emissions, Category 4 (transport methods)

Last reviewed 2026-11-04. Re-check if the GHG Protocol revises its Scope 3 guidance.