Scope 3 and your customers

I’ll wrap up this impromptu jargon-fuelled series shorty, but I want to briefly touch on how your customers form part of your Scope 3 emissions (Scope 3 is predominantly your supply chain).

Recap for continuity: Your supply chain includes any person, organisation, resource, activity or technology contributing to you delivering your work.

(Another way of saying it is that your Scope 3 emissions are other people’s Scope 1 & 2 emissions, if that helps).

So… if your end client is a big polluter, or a fossil fuel company, or a magnate who buys billboards to try to influence election campaigns – their emissions are your emissions, and your Scope 3 tanks.

Which means it’s worth not just checking your suppliers, but also double-checking who your customers are.

My favourite example is in the advertising industry – Clean Creatives are a not-for-profit calling out advertising agencies who work for fossil fuel companies. They believe fossil fuel advertising should be wiped out completely, just like tobacco was.

It comes down to 2 things:

1. If you do work for a fossil fuel company – eg: by creating advertising for them which helps them sell their “wares” – that’s seen as you colluding with, benefitting from, and supporting what they do.
2. Any environmental efforts you’ve made have likely been obliterated by inheriting their emissions – Clean Creatives state that one fossil fuel client can undo decades of progress any ad agency might make.

Your clients are a HUGE part of your Scope 3, and that’s really worth taking a look at.