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CarbonQuota recognised in Packaging Software Buyer’s Guide for product carbon footprinting
CarbonQuota has been included in the Packaging Software Buyer’s Guide from Packaging Software Insights, recognising the growing importance of product carbon footprint software within the packaging technology ecosystem.
Packaging software has traditionally focused on design, CAD, estimating, ERP, MIS, workflow and production. But another layer is rapidly becoming part of that technology stack: accurate environmental and carbon data.
Packaging businesses are increasingly being asked to provide product-level carbon information to customers, brands and sustainability teams. The challenge is doing it quickly, consistently and accurately without adding another complex manual process.
That is exactly the problem CarbonQuota is solving.
Our inclusion in the Packaging Software Buyer’s Guide reflects a wider change taking place across the industry. Carbon footprinting is moving away from spreadsheets, standalone studies and specialist sustainability teams and becoming integrated into the everyday systems and data used to design, estimate and manufacture packaging.
For packaging manufacturers processing hundreds, thousands or even millions of jobs, calculating these footprints manually is simply not scalable.
What is packaging carbon footprint software?
Packaging carbon footprint software calculates the greenhouse gas emissions associated with producing an individual packaging product.
A credible product carbon footprint can require data covering multiple factors, including:
- raw materials
- material weights
- manufacturing processes
- energy
- production waste
- finishing
- transport
- distribution
For packaging manufacturers processing hundreds, thousands or even millions of jobs, calculating these footprints manually is simply not scalable.
CarbonQuota provides technology designed specifically to make product carbon footprinting accurate, automated and scalable across print and packaging.
At its foundation is CarbonQuota’s proprietary environmental data, science and methodology. Technology and AI make that knowledge easier to access, but the quality of the underlying environmental data remains critical to the accuracy and credibility of the final result.
Two ways to automate packaging carbon footprints
CarbonQuota provides two principal ways for print and packaging businesses to access its product carbon footprinting technology.
Quanterra: AI-guided product carbon footprinting
Quanterra is CarbonQuota’s AI-guided product carbon footprint platform. Unlike traditional environmental platforms that require users to understand the information needed and manually enter it into the correct fields and forms, Quanterra uses AI to help interpret packaging specifications.
Users can provide information through guided conversation, documents, CAD files and process data files.
AI helps identify and structure the specification data required for the calculation. That information is then passed to CarbonQuota’s calculation environment, where the product carbon footprint is calculated using our proprietary environmental data, science and methodology.
The result is a much simpler way to calculate a packaging carbon footprint, without the cost and complexity of a major software implementation.
CarbonConnect: automated carbon footprinting through an API
For organisations that want carbon calculations embedded within their existing software and business processes, CarbonConnect is CarbonQuota’s established API solution.
CarbonConnect enables product carbon footprint calculations to be integrated into packaging ERP, MIS, estimating and other production software.
Instead of asking someone to separately calculate a footprint, information already present within the production workflow can be used to automate the calculation.
CarbonQuota already works within the packaging software ecosystem. Our integration with CAI’s Pace, for example, enables product carbon footprints to be calculated from job specifications already held within the MIS, while CarbonQuota has also been named the sustainability partner within ePS’s CommandCore platform.
A full list of our integration partners can be found here.
Can AI calculate packaging carbon footprints?
AI can make product carbon footprinting significantly easier, but there is an important distinction between using AI to understand a packaging specification and using AI as the source of the environmental calculation.
At CarbonQuota, AI is an enabling technology.
With Quanterra, AI can interpret and structure information supplied by the user. That dramatically simplifies the experience because the user doesn’t need to understand carbon accounting or work through complicated environmental forms.
But the carbon calculation itself relies on CarbonQuota’s environmental data, science and methodology.
That is where integration and AI are changing carbon footprinting.
AI helps us understand what is being produced. CarbonQuota’s data and science determine its carbon footprint.
We believe this distinction is crucial as more general-purpose AI tools enter sustainability.
An AI model can understand a question about packaging. Credible product carbon footprinting, however, requires the environmental data and methodology necessary to calculate the impact of the materials, manufacturing processes, energy, waste and transportation associated with that product.
Why integrate carbon footprinting with packaging software?
The real opportunity comes when carbon becomes another data point within the packaging workflow.
A packaging business already captures enormous amounts of information about an individual job.
It knows what is being produced.
It knows the material.
It knows the dimensions.
It knows the quantity.
It knows the production processes.
It may know where the product is being manufactured and where it is being delivered.
Much of the information required to produce a product carbon footprint therefore already exists.
The challenge has historically been converting that operational information into credible environmental data.
That is where integration and AI are changing carbon footprinting.
Instead of creating an entirely separate sustainability workflow, carbon calculations can increasingly use the data that packaging businesses already generate as part of their normal operations.
From carbon reporting to carbon intelligence
Making product carbon footprinting easier isn’t just about producing another sustainability report.
Once a business can calculate carbon consistently across large numbers of packaging products, carbon becomes useful operational data.
Packaging manufacturers and their customers can begin to:
- respond faster to customer requests for product carbon footprints
- compare different packaging specifications
- compare materials and production routes
- identify carbon reduction opportunities
- provide brands with more consistent supply-chain carbon data
- support sustainability and environmental reporting
- incorporate carbon into commercial and procurement decisions
Carbon data becomes far more valuable when it is available at the same speed and scale as the commercial and production data used to run the business.
Carbon is becoming part of the packaging technology stack
CarbonQuota’s inclusion in the Packaging Software Buyer’s Guide is important to us because it reflects this wider transformation.
Carbon footprinting is no longer just a sustainability issue.
It is becoming a data and technology issue.
We’re seeing carbon calculation move closer to estimating systems, ERP, MIS, packaging CAD, production workflows and procurement platforms.
CarbonQuota has spent years building the environmental data, science and methodology needed to make that possible.
Now technologies such as APIs and AI are making that intelligence dramatically easier to access.
Whether a business wants fully automated product carbon footprints integrated into existing software through CarbonConnect, or a fast, accessible way for people to calculate individual packaging footprints through Quanterra, the objective is the same:
Make accurate product carbon footprinting accessible to the packaging industry at scale.
We’re delighted to see that capability recognised in the Packaging Software Insights Buyer’s Guide.
View the Packaging Software Buyer’s Guide
FAQs
What is the best way to calculate a carbon footprint for packaging?
A packaging product carbon footprint needs to account for the relevant materials, manufacturing processes, energy, waste, transport and other elements of the product lifecycle. Specialist packaging carbon footprint software can make this process faster and more consistent than calculating individual products manually.
What is CarbonQuota?
CarbonQuota is a carbon measurement specialist providing product carbon footprint technology for the print and packaging industry. Its technology combines proprietary environmental data, science and methodology with software, APIs and AI to make carbon footprinting more accessible and scalable.
What is Quanterra?
Quanterra is CarbonQuota’s AI-guided product carbon footprint platform. It uses AI to help interpret product and packaging specifications before passing the structured information into CarbonQuota’s calculation environment for carbon footprint calculation.
What is CarbonConnect?
CarbonConnect is CarbonQuota’s API solution for organisations wanting to integrate automated product carbon footprint calculations into existing ERP, MIS, estimating, production or other software systems.
Can CarbonQuota calculate carbon footprints from packaging CAD files?
Quanterra can use AI to help interpret specification information contained in CAD files and other documents. The extracted specification information is then used by CarbonQuota’s calculation environment to calculate the product carbon footprint.
Can packaging carbon footprints be automated?
Yes. Where sufficient specification and production data already exists within packaging ERP, MIS or other software, an API such as CarbonConnect can enable product carbon footprint calculations to become part of the existing workflow.
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