Many food products use what another process left behind: whey, bran, brewers' grains, fruit pomace, trimmings. Sustained lets you say so, accounts for each one the way the method asks, and reports the share of your inputs that is circular and the impact those inputs avoid compared with the conventional ingredient they replace.
What it never does is take that avoided impact off your footprint. It is reported beside the footprint, so the footprint stays what your product actually causes.
What a raw material is
Open the raw material under Supply chain > Raw materials. On its Overview tab, What it is has three choices (ingredients only):
| What it is | Meaning | How it enters your footprint |
|---|---|---|
| Primary | Grown or made for this purpose. The default. | As any raw material: its supplier's figure or our dataset. |
| Co-product | A saleable output of another process. | It carries its allocated share of that process: its supplier's allocated figure where you have one, otherwise our dataset. |
| Residue | Would otherwise be disposed of. | It enters at collection: its transport and your own processing count, the producer's process does not (cut off). |
Where our catalogue knows the ingredient, a suggestion appears, Usually a co-product or Usually a residue, with Apply. Nothing is set for you. Save recalculates every product that uses the raw material. Only admins and LCA experts can change it.
The list shows a Co-product or Residue chip on each row that has one, and the What it is filter narrows the list, its expanded rows and the CSV export to one kind.
A co-product with no supplier figure uses our dataset, and the panel offers to Ask the supplier for their allocated figure.
A residue is cut off even when it has a supplier record. A residue whose figures come from a purchased good you model is the exception: its model carries its burden, and the report marks it Modelled.
Using your own co-products and by-products
Your own co-products and by-products can be ingredients of your other products, from any workspace. In the product editor, or in a change model, the ingredient search has a Co-products group beside Internal products, Purchased goods and Generic ingredients. Each option says where it comes from (the product, the step, and the workspace when it is another one) and how it is counted: By mass, 12% of Cheddar's impact, or Cut off for a by-product.
- The line is entered in grams. Its figures follow the product it comes from ("Figures follow Cheddar"), so there is no supplier to choose and nothing to ask for.
- The product being edited lists its own co-products greyed out: "Comes from this product, so it cannot be used in it."
- Under Supply chain > Raw materials it reads Your own co-product, from which product and step, with a link to that product. It has no Supplier data tab, no asks and no Set supplier, and What it is is fixed to Co-product.
- Its figures follow the co-product each time the source product is recalculated.
See Co-products and by-products for how a product's outputs take their share.
Replaces: what each line stands in for
On a co-product or residue line, in the product editor, on a recipe or in a change model, Replaces (optional) names the conventional ingredient the line stands in for: whey permeate in place of skimmed milk powder, say. It belongs to the line, not the raw material, because the same input can replace wheat flour in a bread and oats in a bar. A line from the catalogue with nothing set is offered Suggest: its own ingredient, with Apply; it is never filled in by itself.
Replaces is used only to state the impact the line avoids on the report. It never changes the footprint.
How the avoided impact is worked out
For each line that names what it replaces, in each impact category:
avoided = the line's mass × (the replaced ingredient's production impact per kg, at the line's origin − the line's own production impact per kg)
The line's own figure is zero for a residue, its supplier's allocated figure for a co-product with one, our dataset otherwise, and for your own co-product the mass-allocated figures it takes from its product. Each line is floored at zero: a line that would avoid less than nothing states nothing, and is never netted against the others. A line whose figures come from a purchased good states no avoided figure. With no line naming what it replaces, the report says No comparison set rather than zero.
The avoided figure is not subtracted from the footprint, and in the GHG report it is kept apart from the avoided emissions from recycling.
On the product report
When a product uses a co-product or residue, its report shows:
- A Circularity tile on the overview (production, PEF, recipe and GHG): the share of input mass from co-products and residues, split own and purchased, and the climate change avoided compared with the conventional ingredients they replace, not subtracted from the footprint. It links to the full section.
- The full Circularity section, in Product Details on the PEF report (avoided impact points and avoided climate change side by side) and as its own section after Avoided emissions on the GHG report (kg CO2e). One line per raw material and replaced ingredient: supplier, own or purchased, type, mass, how its burden enters (Supplier figure, Dataset, Cut-off or Modelled) and what it avoids. A line can be flagged Supplier figure needed (it links to the raw material) or No processing after collection modelled.
- Co-product · by mass and By-product · cut off chips on the raw-material lines: in the contribution trees, the flattened raw materials view (also inside sub-recipes), the Details ingredient table, the recipe tree, Compare and the change modelling report.
- An Allocation and circularity note in Goal & Scope and in the appendix: the mass rule, what the product passes to the co-products it yields, and how each co-product or residue it uses enters.
- The tile, sized for print, on the PEF, GHG and recipe summary PDFs, with the allocation rule as one line.
On volume reports
Baseline, historical and forecast reports add up the circular share and the avoided impact over the portfolio:
- PEF: a Circularity section after the product rankings on the overview, and after the breakdown in the LCIA tab, listing the top products using co-products or residues.
- GHG: a reporting row, Circularity - co-products and residues, after Avoided emissions - Scope 3 only, in MT CO2e. Like the avoided emissions row, it is not part of the total.
A report composed before circularity existed gets the section the next time it is composed.
In what you share
The PACT footprints you publish and your Registry listings state the allocation behind their figures: by mass, with the product's own co-products and by-products and the co-products and residues it uses named.
Not available yet
Products sent through the partner API cannot carry co-products, residues or Replaces yet. Mark them in the app.