Posted by Sam Crick

Current trends in Scope 3 reporting across food and drink organisations

Value chain (Scope 3) emissions are an area of focus for most food and drink organisations. For many, the development of an accurate and robust Scope 3 footprint with the ability to realise reduction initiatives is not a straightforward task.

With companies facing near term targets within the next 4-5 years, the urgency to demonstrate progress and how a target will be achieved is ramping up.

As the 2025 cycle comes to a close, it feels like the right time to reflect on trends we have observed during this reporting year.

What are the current trends within Scope 3 Food and Drink reporting?

Several trends are emerging, but three stand out in particular:

  • Complex landscape of standards and reporting requirements
    Evolving sustainability reporting regulations and standards, including CSRD, ESRS and ASRS, are increasing expectations around the quality, consistency and assurance-readiness of Scope 3 emissions disclosures. The challenge for organisations is: how do I efficiently collect and process the right data, from the right places, in a way that meets the requirements of these standards?

  • Accurate Scope 3 emissions calculations
    Businesses are under pressure to report accurate, transparent and standard-aligned Scope 3 emissions data. Established supplier engagement (particularly for high impact suppliers), reliable data transfers, transparency, and trusted relationships are now of greater importance.

  • Ability to realise value chain emission reduction initiatives and projects
    With targets looming, the ability to realise value chain emission reduction initiatives and projects is crucial. There’s less time to make a recognisable impact, so this is a time-sensitive issue for Scope 3.

What changed in the 2025 reporting year compared to previous years?

Though there are various recurring themes within annual reporting periods, there are certainly some key changes we have seen across our client base this year:

Scope 3 software platforms are not the silver bullet

The evolving nature of integrated sustainability reporting, coupled with companies wanting more tailored calculation approaches, makes it difficult for software platforms to meet every need.

While software solutions can still add value when applied to well-defined use cases, attempting to address too many needs within a single platform often leads to compromises in functionality. It also increases the risk of misaligned stakeholder expectations.

Several of our clients reviewed their data strategy in 2025, with some opting to continue the use of third-party platforms. Others wished to internalise data management and calculations or reverted to tried-and-tested calculations models with expert support.

Growing and impactful supplier engagement

More value chain actors are providing credible datasets, such as assured Scope 1 and 2 emission intensities. While this is a positive step, it creates a new technical challenge for organisations: how do they efficiently and accurately compare emissions factors provided between suppliers?

This has led to greater scrutiny of assessment boundaries, calculation methodologies, and levels of supplier data quality and granularity.

Calculating Scope 3 emissions using a market-based approach

This is a grey area of the GHG Protocol. Many businesses are recognising that to achieve their 2030 targets they should include supplier market-based emissions calculations within their value chain, but this can conflict with their chosen Scope 2 emission calculation approach. This is an area to be careful and transparent with. It may be addressed by the anticipated updates to the GHG Protocol Scope 3 standard.

Looking forward: Scope 3 advice for businesses ahead of the next reporting cycle

Focus on high-impact Scope 3 categories and key suppliers

Companies often spend a huge amount of time and effort on implementing value chain emission reduction plans in categories that will see minimal impact. If you’re looking to hit your near-term targets, it’s a far better idea to:

  • identify your emissions hotspots;
  • collect accurate activity data (not spend-based); and
  • visibly demonstrate reduction opportunities and their potential or implemented impact.

Move away from spend-based calculation approaches for hotspot purchased goods and services

Organisations might rely on a spend-based approach for predominately purchased goods and services and capital goods emission calculations. This can provide a useful starting point, but spend is not a high-quality proxy for emissions. Often, it only provides an indicative view of the footprint.

Best practice is to collect actual activity data (tonnes purchased) and look to obtain reliable supplier data, at least for your key suppliers. This will increase the accuracy of your Scope 3 calculations, so you’ll realise benefits from the reduction initiatives and projects you have planned.

Be ready for new land sector reporting requirements

The GHG protocol issued the new Land Sector and Removals Standard (LSRS) earlier this year. This sets out how land related emissions should be accounted for. This is likely to be important for food and drink companies who, if wanting to keep alignment with the GHG Protocol, would need to update their reporting approaches and inventories from 2027.

For companies wishing to demonstrate savings an increasing requirement for traceability of purchased products with a land sector impact is going to further increase the complexity of the data landscape.

We have explored what the LSRS means food and drink companies here.

Link Scope 3 calculation methodologies to reduction planning

Focus on improving the granularity of your footprint in the areas where your organisation has the greatest ability to influence and deliver emissions reductions. This allows you to move beyond measurement alone, by targeting data improvement efforts in the areas where you have the strongest opportunity to deliver emissions reductions.

Build transparent evidence trails across the reporting process

As Scope 3 footprints move towards greater assurance-readiness, it’s important to clearly map each step, from source data and supplier inputs through to internal checks, verification processes and final reported outputs. This is critical for auditors who need to understand, test, and rely on reported emissions data.

We recommend completing this before and throughout the Scope 3 reporting process, not at the end of the reporting cycle.

Do you want to improve the quality of your Scope 3 reporting?

If you know there’s room for improvement in your Scope 3 strategy, and if you want to better understand where reductions can realistically be achieved, we can help. BIP.Verco supports businesses as they develop robust, transparent and actionable footprints across complex food and drink value chains.

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