Organisation assessments
The question: what is our company’s footprint for this reporting period? This is the standard corporate carbon footprint: all emissions attributable to an organisation over a defined period, usually a financial year, organised into Scope 1, 2, and 3 under the GHG Protocol. Use it when you need a number for annual reporting, client and tender requirements, ASRS-aligned disclosure, or simply to establish a baseline before setting reduction targets. Typical shape of the data: accounting ledger for spend coverage, plus activity data for electricity, fuel, and travel.Event assessments
The question: what was the footprint of this specific event? Events have a distinctive emissions profile: the footprint is usually dominated by attendee travel, catering, freight, and temporary infrastructure — almost all of it Scope 3. An event assessment is bounded by the event itself rather than a financial year. Use it for festivals, conferences, sporting events, exhibitions, and one-off productions — especially when sponsors, venues, or councils are asking for the number. Typical shape of the data: attendee numbers and travel assumptions, supplier and contractor spend, energy used on site, waste collected. See How to measure an event footprint for the full walkthrough.Product assessments
The question: what is the footprint of one unit of this product? Product assessments follow a life cycle structure — materials, manufacturing, distribution, use, and end-of-life — rather than the scope structure. The result is a footprint per unit (per item, per kilogram, per serving) that can support product claims and customer requests. Use it when customers ask for product-level carbon data, or when you want to compare design and sourcing choices. Typical shape of the data: bill of materials, production energy, packaging, and freight distances. See What is an LCA? for the concepts behind it.Which one should you start with?
For almost every company: start with an organisation assessment. It gives you the complete picture, identifies where your impact actually is, and creates the baseline every other decision hangs off. Event and product assessments make sense once there’s a specific event or product that needs its own number.Assessment types can coexist in one workspace. An events company might run an organisation assessment for its annual footprint and separate event assessments for each major production.