Scope 3 – The challenging step towards decarbonisation

The path to climate neutrality leads through Scope 3 emissions. At EJOT, as at many other manufacturing companies, they make up the largest amount of the CO2e footprint.

Scope 3 summarises emissions caused by processes that take place outside the company but are related to the company's production. The problem is that these emissions are more difficult to measure and influence.

“If, for example, a container ship does not take the route through the Red Sea for safety reasons, but instead takes a diversion, then these are additional emissions that we are not able to influence,” explains Sebastian Böttcher, Strategic Purchaser at EJOT. “We are often completely dependent on external developments and service providers such as suppliers.”

In order to reduce Scope 3 emissions quickly and sustainably, EJOT is in close dialogue with its suppliers. For example, a workshop was held with eleven suppliers from the entire supply chain to develop ways to reduce CO2e. This showed a great willingness to tackle concrete projects about CO2e reduction.

A total of 98 suggestions were developed during the ideas phase, which were clustered into various categories. These included initiatives that can be carried out jointly by the suppliers and EJOT, as well as activities that (can) be carried out without further support from EJOT.

A lack of data transparency of many ideas made the concrete calculation of savings potential difficult. There is considerable potential for savings in surface plating technology, for example, with the use of CO2e-reduced substances or temperature changes in the production process, with cost-neutral expenditure.

But even seemingly small ideas, such as reducing the frequency of deliveries from suppliers to EJOT or the type of packaging, ultimately contribute to reducing emissions.

“The continuation of the initiatives will become the responsibility of Strategic Purchasing,” explains Sebastian Böttcher. Joint initiatives between EJOT purchasing and suppliers are planned by the responsible purchasers and implemented with measures. The implementation status of the suppliers’ independent initiatives is regularly discussed with EJOT. Improvements that have an impact on the “product carbon footprint” are communicated internally to environmental management.

Another example of achieving greater reductions at Scope 3 level is EJOT’s use of CO2e-reduced steel. This was introduced last year as part of the pilot project with steel producer Arcelor Mittal (Hamburg) and the Finkernagel wire plant (Altena). Arcelor Mittal produces highly CO2-reduced XCarb® steel from recycled and renewable material with a significantly lower CO2 footprint than conventionally produced steel, which is processed by the Finkernagel wire mill. EJOT, on the other hand, produces fasteners from cold-formed drawn wire.

The project to purchase CO2-reduced steel will be expanded to 500 tonnes this year. The fact that EJOT requires around 43,000 tonnes of steel per year shows that this is just the beginning of a long journey. “This is a major challenge, but one that we will tackle with vigour in line with our climate protection goal,” says Mr Böttcher.

Another area is the use of recycled granulate. “Nevertheless, the costs are still very high, as is the amount of testing required to fulfil the quality requirements of EJOT and our customers,” explains Sebastian Böttcher. The approval processes for utilising the recycled material are also quite lengthy.

EJOT will continue to push the issue of sustainability in its collaboration with suppliers. “We are currently conducting a large-scale survey of our suppliers on the subject of sustainability and environmental protection. In 2024, these topics will become relevant in the supplier evaluation for the first time,” says Böttcher. In future, the criteria in purchasing will no longer just be quality, flexibility and price, but also “sustainability and environmental protection”.

The importance of the topic at EJOT is also shown by the fact that sustainability will once again be the focus of the EJOT Supplier Day in November and that suppliers will be honoured with sustainability awards for the first time.