# Can I count the carbon in a paper or wooden pack as stored by choosing a short end-of-life time period?

Canonical: https://senseible.earth/answers/carbon-held-in-paper-pack-end-of-life-time-rule

No. The Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol Product Standard says a company may not assume carbon is stored in a product by shortening the end-of-life time period. It should be known that the waste treatment stores it indefinitely, and any stored carbon shall be reported.

## What the standard says

- A company may not assume that carbon is stored in a product by shortening the end-of-life time period. It should be known that the carbon is stored indefinitely as a result of waste treatment.
- The standard's example: a company cannot assign an end-of-life time period of five years to a product that aerobically degrades in ten years.
- When a company knows that all or part of a product's carbon does not return to the atmosphere during waste treatment, it is required to disclose and justify this in the inventory report. The standard's example is lignin, a carbon-based part of wood that does not degrade under anaerobic conditions.
- Companies shall report the amount of carbon contained in the product or its components that is not released to the atmosphere during waste treatment, if applicable.
- The standard says that if paper degrades in a landfill, the carbon dioxide and methane emitted are classed as biogenic emissions, to be reported separately from non-biogenic ones.

## What it does not allow

- Inventory results shall not use weighting factors for delayed emissions. You may show the impact of delayed emissions and removals separately.
- Offsets and avoided emissions shall not be included in the inventory results.

## How the plant's wood uptake is worked out

The removal for a biogenic input reflects only the carbon contained in the material. The standard's example: 50 tons of wood that is 50 percent carbon gives 25 tons of carbon removal. Carbon is turned into carbon dioxide by multiplying by 44 over 12.

## The standard's own wood example, carried through

- Wood input: 50 tons, 50 percent carbon, so 50 x 0.50 = 25 tons of carbon
- As carbon dioxide: 25 x 44 / 12 = 91.67 tons of carbon dioxide (our multiplication)
- Our reading: if the pack's waste treatment is known to release the carbon, it shows as an emission at end of life. If it is known to store it, that has to be reported and justified, not assumed.

The 50 tons and 50 percent are the standard's example inputs, not a paper factor. The 91.67 is our arithmetic on them. The last line is our reading.

## What Senseible does here

Senseible reads fuel invoices, electricity bills and fuel slips into a dated emission record. It does not decide whether a pack counts as storing carbon; that depends on the waste treatment you can show.

- [Biogenic carbon in timber building materials](https://senseible.earth/answers/biogenic-carbon-in-timber-building-materials)
- [Agro-residue paper mill biogenic carbon dioxide](https://senseible.earth/answers/agro-residue-paper-mill-biogenic-co2)
- [Carbon in the landfill: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defaults for factory waste](https://senseible.earth/answers/ipcc-factory-waste-to-landfill-carbon-and-decay-defaults)
- [Free calculators](https://senseible.earth/calculators)

Sources: [GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard (chapters 7, 9 and 11)](https://ghgprotocol.org/sites/default/files/standards/Product-Life-Cycle-Accounting-Reporting-Standard_041613.pdf)

Last reviewed 2026-11-05. Rules are from sections 7.3.6, 11.2, 11.3 and Box 7.2 of the Product Standard. The timber page follows EN 15804+A2, which reports the same carbon as removal and emission modules; neither lets stored carbon be subtracted as a lasting credit.