Carbon Emissions Series: Scope 3 for Hospitality

/ Timothy Chen

If someone asks you to measure your property’s scope 3 emissions, you should tell them that it’s basically impossible. Because it is. That’s the gist of this post. But before we despair over the endless range of scope 3 emissions for a hotel property, let’s toss in the GHG Protocol’s definition:

Scope 3: Other indirect emissions, such as the extraction and production of purchased materials and fuels, transport-related activities in vehicles not owned or controlled by the reporting entity, electricity-related activities (e.g. T&D losses) not covered in Scope 2, outsourced activities, waste disposal, etc.

How far does your supply chain reach? The vast scope, depth, and complexity of hotels' supply chains and customer interactions make scope 3 measurement a daunting task.

Let’s start by looking at just some of the possible sources of scope 3 emissions for hotels. For most businesses, scope three would only relate to their supply chain: the systems of people, technology, and activities necessary for moving a product to a customer. But hotels are different because they represent a co-produced service–i.e., both the hotel and the customer must act in order for the service to be delivered. For example, hotel customers usually travel some distance in order to arrive at the property, and their travel-related emissions would be part of a hotel’s scope 3 emissions.
What are some scope 3 emissions associated with the hotel guest? Most of the emissions relate to the guest’s travel to and from the destination and are associated with the following issues:
  • Airline travel
  • Ground transportation
  • Local area travel during the stay
  • Recreational activities completed during the stay

That may seem simple enough, but now let’s take into consideration scope 3 on the hotel side, which would include any and all emissions associated with producing and transporting the following things to the hotel:

  • Food and beverage items
  • Guest amenities
  • FOH and BOH furniture, fixtures, and equipment
  • Employee supplies
  • Maintenance and engineering orders
  • Indirect utilities (electricity transmission and distribution, water treatment, etc.)
  • Waste removal and disposal

This is the tip of the iceberg, as scope 3 covers all indirect emissions that originate from anything going into and coming out of the hotel. When we look at the breadth of emissions included in scope 3 for hotels, we can begin to understand why quantifying and tracking it would be near impossible.

Consider one of many guest amenities: the shampoo bottle in the bathroom. The seemingly simple task of drawing out the entire supply chain for that shampoo bottle and then calculating the emissions along every step represents a colossal undertaking in itself. We would need to see what the specific ingredients are, where the ingredients are extracted, how the ingredients are combined, where the plastic bottles are made, how the ingredients and bottles are put together, how the shampoo bottles are transported, how the guests use them, and how they are disposed of. Now imagine having to do that–and more–for every amenity, food item, beverage item, BOH item, etc.

No major organization has yet attempted to create a calculation tool for hotel scope 3 emissions. While a limited number of scope 3 calculation tools exist (take a look at CDP’s Supply Chain reports), the companies attempting to measure scope 3 under those programs are mostly IT and consumer goods firms. These companies have a more straightforward product that have fewer sourcing complexities than hotels do. For hotels, each individual property can draw products and services from hundreds of external firms. Therefore, we are faced with the frustrating conclusion that many of our scope 3 emissions actually represent someone else’s scope 1 and 2 emissions. For now, our industry is limited to focusing on its own scope 1 and 2 emissions.

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