To enable accurate and efficient assessments, Pickler provides access to secondary data from the IDEMAT database, featuring verified market average environmental data.
With secondary data, you can calculate the impact of your packaging, without direct emissions measurements. This enabling quick, consistent environmental assessments while highlighting hotspots.
Why move from secondary to primary data?
Using secondary data offers many benefits, but transitioning to primary data adds considerable additional value to your assessment.
Primary data is highly specific information gathered directly from a product’s actual lifecycle, including details like energy use and material compositions.
Here's why you want to move to primary data:
Increased Accuracy: While secondary data provides quick, reliable industry averages for environmental assessments, primary data is directly measured or collected at the specific facility or set of facilities where your product is produced.
Competitive Differentiation: Access to product-specific data allows companies to showcase their packaging’s true sustainability credentials and their dedication to transparency, giving them a competitive edge.
Regulatory Compliance: With stricter regulations like the EU’s Green Claims Directive and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) requiring transparency and accuracy in environmental claims, primary data supports verifiable, specific information. This minimizes greenwashing risks and aligns with stringent sustainability reporting standards, establishing credibility with regulators and customers alike.
Potentially lowering your footprint: Primary data can show a lower impact if specific processes or materials are more efficient than the secondary data.
What primary data can be used in Pickler?
Energy Mix During production
Knowing the actual energy sources used at your production site (e.g., the ratio of renewable to non-renewable energy) provides a much more precise impact assessment than general regional averages. If your supplier uses a greener energy mix, updating this to reflect primary data can lower your product’s calculated emissions.Energy Consumption during production
Recording the exact amount of energy used per unit during production is essential for accurate impact calculation. Instead of relying on average industry energy use for similar processes, primary data allows you to account for any energy-saving methods or efficiencies specific to your supplier.
Getting primary data for your suppliers
To collect primary data, the best place to start is with your supplier, who can provide details about the energy sources and consumption figures specific to your product.
By moving from secondary to primary data, you create a clearer, more credible picture of your product’s impact, making your sustainability efforts truly stand out.