# Should office and canteen emissions be included in a product carbon footprint?

Canonical: https://senseible.earth/answers/allocate-office-overheads-to-product-footprint

A product footprint usually covers the processes that make the product. Office lighting, canteens and staff travel are often left out as non-attributable under the GHG Protocol Product Standard, if you say so. In a company inventory they always count. Keep the two figures separate and state the boundary.

## Common practice

- Include: process fuel, electricity, materials, packaging, inbound transport.
- Often excluded: offices, canteens, R&D, business travel.
- State every exclusion in the report.

## If the buyer wants everything

Allocate site overheads by production share, such as tonnes or machine hours, and show it as a separate line.

## What Senseible does here

Senseible reads bills, fuel invoices and production records into dated, fingerprinted records, so the figure you send a buyer can be traced to its documents.

- [Allocate factory electricity to products](https://senseible.earth/answers/how-to-allocate-factory-electricity-to-products)
- [Allocate by machine hours](https://senseible.earth/answers/allocate-plant-emissions-by-machine-hours)

Sources: [GHG Protocol standards, including the Product Standard](https://ghgprotocol.org/standards), [GHG Protocol Corporate Standard](https://ghgprotocol.org/corporate-standard)

Last reviewed 2026-10-23.