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 for annual reporting, client and tender requirements, ASRS-aligned disclosure, or to establish a baseline before setting reduction targets. Typical data: activity data for electricity, fuel, and travel, plus accounting spend to reach the categories you cannot meter.Event assessments
The question: what was the footprint of this specific event? Events have a distinctive profile. The footprint is usually dominated by attendee travel, catering, freight, and temporary infrastructure, almost all of it Scope 3. The boundary is the event itself rather than a financial year, which means it often spans bump-in and pack-down rather than neat calendar dates. Use it for festivals, conferences, sporting events, exhibitions, and one-off productions, especially when sponsors, venues, or councils are asking for the number. Typical data: attendee numbers and travel assumptions, energy used on site, waste collected, supplier and contractor records. 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 rather than the scope structure: materials, manufacturing, distribution, use, and end-of-life. The result is a footprint per unit, per item, per kilogram, or per serving, which is what customers ask for and what product claims rest on. Use it when customers request product-level carbon data, or when you want to compare design and sourcing choices before committing to them. Typical 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, shows where your impact actually sits, and creates the baseline every other decision hangs off. Event and product assessments earn their place once there is a specific event or product that needs its own number.Assessment types coexist in one workspace. An events company might run an organisation assessment for its annual footprint alongside separate event assessments for each major production.