# Should my product footprint be cradle-to-gate or cradle-to-grave?

Canonical: https://senseible.earth/answers/cradle-to-gate-or-cradle-to-grave

If you make a part, material or ingredient that someone else turns into a final product, report cradle-to-gate: you cannot know how it will be used or disposed of. If you sell a finished product to end users, standards expect cradle-to-grave unless a product rule or your buyer says otherwise.

## What each boundary covers

- Cradle-to-gate: raw material extraction, processing, inbound transport and your own manufacturing, up to the product leaving your factory gate.
- Cradle-to-grave: all of that plus distribution, use and end of life (recycling, landfill or incineration).
- Gate-to-gate: only your own factory. Useful internally, but buyers rarely accept it as a product footprint.

## What the standards allow

The GHG Protocol Product Standard requires cradle-to-grave, but allows cradle-to-gate for intermediate products whose end use is unknown, as long as you state and justify the boundary. ISO 14067 calls a cradle-to-gate result a partial carbon footprint and allows it when the product category rules or the purpose support it.

The PACT Pathfinder Framework, used by many large buyers for supplier data exchange, asks for cradle-to-gate footprints so the buyer can add its own stages.

## Decide in four questions

1. Does your buyer, a product category rule (PCR) or an EPD programme specify the boundary? If so, follow it.
2. Is your product an input to someone else's product? If yes, cradle-to-gate.
3. Do use-phase emissions dominate, as with motors, pumps or appliances that consume energy? Then the buyer or end user will want use phase, and cradle-to-grave is worth the work.
4. Are you making a claim to consumers? Then cover the full life cycle, because a gate-only figure can mislead.

## What to write with the number

- The boundary in words, and the declared unit (per kg, per piece, per metre).
- What is excluded and why, for example packaging or capital goods.
- Allocation method if your plant makes several products.
- The data year and the sources of secondary factors.

## What Senseible does here

Senseible's product carbon footprint calculator builds a cradle-to-gate figure from materials, energy and transport, and factory electricity and fuel can come from bills already read in Senseible. It does not model use phase or end of life, and it does not certify footprints.

- [ISO 14067 vs GHG Protocol Product Standard](https://senseible.earth/climate-intelligence/iso-14067-vs-ghg-protocol-product-standard-explained)
- [Product carbon footprint calculator](https://senseible.earth/calculators/product-carbon-footprint)
- [PACT Pathfinder Framework explained](https://senseible.earth/answers/pact-pathfinder-framework-explained)

Sources: [GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard (2011)](https://ghgprotocol.org/standards), [ISO 14067:2018, Carbon footprint of products (iso.org)](https://www.iso.org), [WBCSD PACT Pathfinder Framework and Technical Specifications for PCF data exchange](https://www.wbcsd.org)

Last reviewed 2026-10-15.