Every term on this site, defined in two lines.
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A form your retail customer sends you, asking how your company handles emissions, waste, water, packaging and labor.
Costco, Whole Foods, Target and Sysco all have one. It arrives by email, with a date on it.
For you: it is the moment the whole subject stops being optional. Most companies see one before they ever hear the words “SB 253”.
A buyer questionnaire asks about 11 things. Those 11 fall into 6 areas: supply chain, labor, animal welfare, environment, packaging and emissions.
The two numbers are one frame, not two. The areas are the headings a buyer thinks in; the eleven are the specific answers they want under them.
Emissions holds five of the eleven, supply chain holds two.
Animal welfare carries no numbered question — it reads as not applicable for a company that handles no animal products.
For you: four are answerable from your own records: Scope 1, Scope 2, your water use, and whether your certifications are current.
The other seven need a document from someone else. See which are which.
Three buckets for greenhouse gas emissions.
Scope 1 is fuel you burn yourself — vans, boilers. Scope 2 is the electricity you buy.
Scope 3 is everything else: what your suppliers emit making your ingredients, packaging and freight.
For you: Scope 1 and 2 come off your own bills in an afternoon. Scope 3 sits in other firms’ records — weeks, not hours.
Costco’s own 2024 inventory: 180 million metric tons with suppliers, 2.6 million from its operations.
A California law. Companies doing more than $1 billion of business in the state must publish their Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions.
First reports due Nov 10, 2026.
For you: under $1 billion, the law is not aimed at you. But your large customers are covered, and their Scope 3 is your emissions. Hence the questionnaire.
Tier 1 is anyone you buy from directly and pay an invoice to — your co-packer, your bottle supplier, your farm. Tier 2 is who they buy from.
For you: most questionnaires ask for a Tier 1 list, and the more demanding ones ask for Tier 2. You already know your Tier 1 — it is your accounts payable list.
The companion law to SB 253. Companies over $500 million publish how climate change could hurt them financially — floods, droughts, supply disruption.
And what they are doing about it.
Not currently in force. The Ninth Circuit enjoined enforcement on Nov 18, 2025, before the first Jan 1, 2026 deadline.
It has not ruled on the merits. Where it stands.
For you: it is a written report about risk, not a set of emissions numbers, and there is no date on it while the injunction holds.
SB 253 was not enjoined and is unaffected.
A California packaging law. Single-use packaging sold in the state must become recyclable or compostable on a set timetable.
Producers pay into a fund that covers collecting it.
For you: this one is about what your product is wrapped in, not what you emit. If you sell physical goods in California it reaches you.
The California Air Resources Board — the state agency that writes the detailed rules for SB 253 and SB 261 and receives the reports.
For you: CARB sets the dates, and it moves them. It pushed the first SB 253 report from Aug to Nov 2026, six weeks before the original deadline.
The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. Europe’s version of the same idea, and considerably more detailed than California’s.
For you: it matters if you sell into Europe or supply someone who does. The good news is that the evidence it wants is largely the same evidence.
A European rule about what you may print on a pack.
“Carbon neutral”, “eco” and “sustainable” must be backed by evidence you can produce on request.
For you: it turns marketing copy into something that needs a document behind it.
The principle that whoever puts packaging on the market pays for collecting and recycling it, rather than the council or the consumer.
For you: it usually arrives as a fee based on how much packaging you sell and how recyclable it is.
The whole exercise of working out how much greenhouse gas your company is responsible for, and being able to show how you got there.
It is bookkeeping, not science: activity data in, published conversion rates applied, a number out, with the workings kept.
For you: the phrase covers everything else on this page.
If someone says “we need to start carbon accounting”, they mean Scope 1 and 2 first, from your own bills.
The year you measure everything else against — the first full inventory you are willing to stand behind.
For you: a reduction target means nothing without one. “Down 30%” is a claim about two numbers, and the baseline is the other one.
The twelve months a set of figures covers. Usually your financial year, and it does not have to be a calendar year.
For you: the figures due in Nov 2026 are for 2025. A number is only useful to a buyer if the year it belongs to is on it.
Primary is measured at the source — your supplier’s own meter reading, their own invoice.
Secondary is an industry average applied to how much you bought.
For you: this is the whole reason suppliers get chased. Secondary data is accepted and it is always worse for you.
Averages are set by the middle of the market rather than by what you actually do.
The emissions attached to one product rather than to the whole company — per bottle, per case, per kilo.
For you: retailers increasingly ask per SKU, because that is the unit they buy in. It is company data divided down, not a separate study.
The same metric ton of emissions counted twice — once by the supplier who emitted it and once by the customer who bought the thing.
For you: in Scope 3 this is expected, not an error. Your emissions really are your customer’s emissions too.
It only becomes a problem when a reduction is claimed by both.
Two ways to count the electricity you buy. Location-based uses the average of the grid you sit on.
Market-based uses what you actually contracted for — a renewable tariff, a power purchase agreement, certificates.
For you: most questionnaires want both, and the gap between them is the value of your energy contract.
Reporting only the flattering one is the thing an assurer looks for.
Metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. All the different greenhouse gases converted into one common unit so they can be added together.
For you: it is just the unit emissions are counted in, the way miles are the unit for distance.
The free, globally used rulebook for how to count emissions. It is where the Scope 1, 2 and 3 buckets come from.
For you: when a questionnaire asks whether your figures are “GHG Protocol aligned”, it is asking whether you counted them the standard way.
A published conversion rate — so many kilograms of CO2 per litre of diesel, per kilowatt hour, per kilo of aluminium.
For you: this is how an estimate gets made when nobody has measured the real thing. It is legitimate, and it must be labeled as an estimate.
A study of one product’s whole footprint, from raw material to disposal.
For you: thorough, slow and expensive. Rarely what a buyer questionnaire is actually asking for.
Deciding which issues matter enough to report on, and being able to show why you decided that.
For you: it is permission to leave out the trivial, as long as you can say how you chose.
Publishing a figure or a fact where anyone can see it — on your website, in an annual report, or in a filing to a regulator.
For you: a number in a spreadsheet on your laptop is not a disclosure. The same number on your website is.
A report submitted to a government body by a deadline, in the format that body demands.
For you: the SB 253 filing is the thing due Nov 10, 2026. A questionnaire from a customer is not a filing, though it asks for much of the same content.
An outside firm checks your numbers and signs to say they are sound.
“Limited” is a light check. “Reasonable” is closer to a full audit.
For you: SB 253 requires limited assurance on Scope 1 and 2 to begin with, not on Scope 3.
A questionnaire and a scoring service, run by a nonprofit, that thousands of large companies fill in every year about emissions, water and forests.
Scores run from D- to A. Answers are largely public.
For you: if a customer asks for your CDP score and you do not have one, that is normal for a small supplier.
What they usually want is the underlying data, not the letter.
A paid supplier rating service. You submit documents and an analyst reviews them.
You get a medal — bronze to platinum — that your customers can look up.
For you: a procurement tool, so it is a customer who asks for it. The evidence it wants is largely the evidence a buyer questionnaire wants.
A membership platform where suppliers store labor and ethics data and share it with the customers who ask. SMETA is the audit that feeds it.
For you: common in food and grocery. One record, shared with many customers, rather than the same forms filled in repeatedly.
The Global Reporting Initiative — the oldest and most widely used template for a sustainability report.
It covers environmental, social and governance topics.
For you: it shapes how a report is laid out. It does not tell you how to count emissions; that is the GHG Protocol’s job.
The International Sustainability Standards Board, which sits under the body that writes global accounting rules.
Its standards put climate disclosure in the financial report rather than beside it.
For you: it matters through your customers and your bank. Where it is adopted, climate figures get the same treatment as financial ones.
Two standard labor audits. An auditor visits a site and checks hours, pay, safety and whether workers can raise a complaint.
For you: when a questionnaire asks for a “social audit”, one of these is usually what it means.
A paper trail showing that the certified material you paid for is the material that ended up in your product, at every handover along the way.
For you: it is the difference between “we buy organic cotton” and being able to prove the cotton in this batch was the organic one.
The share of your packaging made from material that a person already used and put in a recycling bin — as opposed to offcuts from a factory floor.
For you: your packaging supplier holds this number. It is usually one email to get it.
Checking your own supply chain for problems on a regular schedule, and keeping a record of having looked.
For you: the record of looking is often what is asked for, not a guarantee that nothing was found.
A certification for the whole company covering workers, community, environment and governance. Reassessed every three years.
For you: broad rather than deep. It says something about how the company is run; it does not produce an emissions figure.
The Science Based Targets initiative. It reviews a company’s emissions reduction target and confirms it is steep enough to match the science.
For you: a target, not an achievement. Useful because it shows direction, and a buyer can look it up.
An outside body checks a specific claim against a written standard and lets you display a mark for a fixed period.
For you: every certification covers a slice and leaves the rest out. We assess each one — what it covers, what it does not.
How many of the 11 questions a buyer asks you can currently answer with a document behind it. Written as “4 of 11”.
For you: it counts requirements met. The number is how progress gets measured. It is not the product.
What sits underneath it is where the work is, and that is what you act on. See it move.
The page we build for a company from what is public about it — filings, certifications, published commitments.
It shows what is documented across the six areas and what is still open.
One company, one record, one address: yko.earth/record/<company>.
It was called a scorecard, a dashboard and a passport until Aug 2026, which made three things out of one.
For you: free, and it exists whether you ask for it or not. You can correct it. The full list.
Where the documents your suppliers send land — certificates, bills, audit reports — each with a date and a source attached.
For you: the point is that when a buyer asks in eight months, you are not hunting through email.
A private web address you send one supplier. They open it on a phone, photograph a certificate, and press send. No account, no password.
For you: this is the part that makes Scope 3 tractable. Most suppliers answer in about 15 minutes.
Tell us and we will add it. That is a failure on our side, not yours.