Carbon footprint: simply explained

Knowing your carbon footprint can help you to make informed decisions

How is your footprint estimated?
Surprised by a large footprint?
Manage your sustainability insights

Introduction

The climate crisis is one of the greatest challenges the world faces today. We believe that governments, businesses and individuals need to work together to tackle this challenge. The carbon footprint tracker makes it easier for you to understand the impact of your actions.

In a nutshell

What is a carbon footprint?

A carbon footprint is the sum of all the greenhouse gas emissions that are needed to produce a product or to use a service. It is expressed in carbon dioxide equivalents, CO₂e. To keep it simple, we’ll be using the term carbon footprint.

Why is the carbon footprint useful?

The carbon footprint is a tool to help you understand the impact of your actions on the environment: where you eat, how you travel, where you shop. It provides you with a simple way to track, measure and manage the impact of your carbon emissions.

Calculating an accurate carbon footprint is complicated: A product is produced, transported, distributed and sold. A service is prepared and undertaken. Each of these steps involves carbon emissions. The high level of complexity means that it is never possible to calculate a completely accurate footprint.

The good news is, having a general idea of your carbon footprint is enough to be mindful of your consumption choices. Our goal with the carbon footprint tracker is more about helping you understand the big picture. Similarly, you can think about the following question: is an apple or chocolate bar healthier? Most of us know an apple is healthier, but don’t know why exactly his is the case i.e. which macro and micro nutrients make the apple healthier. But we understand the big picture and make informed decisions.

How do we estimate your carbon footprint?

Your purchases

Emission factor per merchant category

Estimated carbon footprint

Payment of 80 CHF

Grocery store emission factor of 0.3 kg CO₂e/ CHF

Estimated carbon footprint of 24kg

Each payment is assigned to a merchant category. 
Each merchant category has an emission factor that indicates its carbon intensity per Swiss franc.
The carbon footprint is the result of multiplying the emission factor with the payment amount.

How is your personal data processed?

This is how we use your data.

Reducing the carbon footprint

How can you reduce your footprint?

Together with our partners, myclimate and MYBLUEPLANET, we have put together some tips and tricks on how you can reduce your carbon footprint. There are many ways in which you can reduce it and help the environment; whether you’re at home, work, or you’re travelling, small changes can make a difference.

What are we doing to reduce our footprint?

We’re committed to doing our part, from addressing our own emissions to those of our business activities and supply chain.

Reducing our own emissions

We are working to minimize our own operational footprint. For example, we are reducing our emissions through energy efficiencies in our buildings and by switching to more sustainable energy sources, across the combined firm.

If you would like to read more about the progress made of integrating UBS and Credit Suisse’s sustainability policy frameworks and processes, please check out our Sustainability Report 2023 (PDF, 4 MB) .

As a financial service provider

We all know finance has a powerful influence on the world. At UBS, we reimagine the power of people and capital, to create a better world for everyone. Hence our ambition is to be the financial provider of choice for clients who wish to mobilize capital toward the achievement of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (the SDGs) and the orderly transition to a low-carbon economy.

For this transition, we have defined principles in our company’s policies. These principles are applied to all our activities, including granting loans.

Examples of our principles and activities include:

No financing of new coal-fired power plant projects, new offshore oil projects in the Arctic. Greenfield thermal coal mines or greenfield oil sands projects

Energy efficient real-estate New financing solutions launched in Switzerland to encourage clients to invest in more sustainable energy and heating systems

USD 292 billion reached in our sustainable investing assets under management

Partnership with two pioneering Swiss companies – Neustark and Climeworks – established in 2022 to remove 39,500 tones of CO₂ from the atmosphere over the next 13 years.

Launched Carbonplace together with other banks. A platform that connects buyers and sellers of carbon credits.

The UBS Sustainability and Impact Institute contributes to debates about sustainability, with a focus on actionable and timely contribution.

Deep Dive

Carbon footprint

What is the carbon footprint per person in Switzerland?

How much is one ton of CO₂?

CO₂, or carbon dioxide, is expressed in kilograms or tons.

One might assume that one kilogram of CO₂ is roughly equivalent to a 1 liter bottle of water. In fact, CO₂ is much larger in size: One liter of CO₂ weighs just 1.96 grams. Therefore, one kilo of CO₂ has the size of 509 one-liter water bottles.

Here are a few examples that emit one ton of CO₂:

driving 3'300 kilometers with a petrol car;
flying from Frankfurt to New York;
drinking 8'800 cups of coffee;
or a balloon with a diameter of nine meters and a volume of around 380 m³.

Source myclimate

The methodology

What data is used?

The methodology looks at the full value chain

The methodology uses financial and environmental data from S&P Global Trucost as its underlying source of data.

The data covers the full value chain of goods and services (raw materials, manufacturing, transportation as well as product use and disposal).

For example, if you buy a car, the carbon footprint of the car includes:

all emissions that are caused by the raw materials and the manufacturing process (e.g., company facilities, electricity, heating, etc.);
the emissions that are caused during the sales process (e.g., transport, office buildings, etc.);
the emissions that are caused when using the car; and
the emissions caused when disposing of it.

Combining reported and modeled data

The dataset from S&P Global Trucost is based on information disclosed by companies about their carbon footprint from annual reports and sustainability reports, as well as best-in-class modeling techniques based on scientific research and public datasets (including life cycle assessment studies, research papers, and government databases). Modeling techniques and public datasets are needed because not all companies publish information on their carbon footprint or do this only partially.

How is your carbon footprint estimated?

Every store is mapped to a merchant category

Let’s say that you bought something at a grocery store. The grocery store is the merchant. We identify which category the merchant is active in. To do this, we use the merchant category code (MCC). The MCC is an international standard for classifying merchants by the types of goods and services they provide. This information is included in the transaction information of every purchase. In this case, the MCC would be “Groceries”.

For Groceries, the MCC is the same for all grocery stores, not distinguishing between different chains and regardless of whether the store sells only organic food. Details regarding the actual items purchased (the composition of your shopping cart) cannot be considered as this data is not transmitted to us. This is why we are talking about an estimation of your carbon footprint. We have screened the market, and there is currently no more advanced methodology available. We hope that future developments will continue to improve the estimation of your carbon footprint by allowing for a more sophisticated categorization of your transactions and analysis of the exact items you purchase. To make this possible, companies around the world need to work together to improve their carbon emissions reporting.

Estimating the CO₂ intensity of each transaction

To calculate an estimate of the emissions for each transaction, we multiply the purchase price by a given category’s emission factor. The emission factors are based on companies’ reported carbon footprint divided by their revenue within the relevant category. For a company with more than one revenue stream, the data is allocated to the respective stream to gain a more accurate emission factor for each stream.

The carbon footprint is the result of multiplying the emission factor with the payment amount. For example: 80 CHF spent in a grocery store x 0,3 kg CO₂e / CHF = 24kg CO₂

To summarize: each Swiss Franc spent is assigned to a merchant category and multiplied by that category’s emission factor.

What do carbon footprint estimations include?

The estimation is based solely on the transactions you do with your UBS accounts and cards, including joint accounts. This means that all purchases you make in cash won’t be reflected in your carbon footprint. You can select the accounts and cards you would like to have included by adjusting the settings for UBS key4 insights in the UBS Mobile Banking App.

Your personal situation is not considered as we do not collect this kind of information for data privacy reasons. For example, the estimation does not take into account that one person may be paying for the majority of the expenses of a four-person family household. It also means that the carbon footprint is estimated at the time of the transaction, not when the CO₂ is actually emitted.

Transactions included in the carbon footprint estimations are:

Payments with a debit, prepaid or credit card
TWINT payments to a merchant
Invoice payments

Transactions not included in the carbon footprint estimations are:

Transactions that are not consumption-based, such as cash withdrawals, sending money to a friend, investments and donations
Transactions that are not part of a lifestyle footprint, such as rent, tax, and broadcasting fees.
Finally, UBS decided to descope transactions that are compulsory in Switzerland and hence cannot be influenced. This is the case, for example for health insurance, which is compulsory in Switzerland.

To sum it up, the focus is on providing an indication of an individual’s lifestyle footprint which, according to the 1.5-degree lifestyle report, is defined as “Greenhouse gas emissions directly and indirectly induced by an average household’s consumption but excluding those from the public sector and capital investment”.

Is your carbon footprint larger than expected?

Were you surprised by your footprint after you made a purchase? Or did you buy a sustainable product but the carbon footprint was larger than you expected?

The carbon footprint tracker is a tool to help you understand the impact of your actions on the environment. It provides you with a simple way to track, and compare emissions in different categories. However, the tracker is not omniscient. Some transactions will require your own judgment to set the estimated emissions into context. We have put together three general remarks about these types of transactions as well as more detailed explanations.

Three general remarks:

The estimation of the carbon footprint is spending-based. This means that the carbon footprint is directly connected to the price you pay for a product. A very expensive product (even if it is sustainably produced) may, therefore, have a higher footprint than a cheaper product.
No details about the actual items purchased are transmitted to us. This means that the carbon estimations are not based on the items you bought but rather on the type of store you bought them from and what these stores typically sell.
The methodology takes the entire lifecycle into account: Have you ever asked yourself if it’s better for the climate to order online or buy in store? In fact, how you buy a product is only one small part of the entire production and distribution lifecycle, and there are typically other steps in the process that make a bigger difference.

Further explanations

Grocery shopping / Restaurants

No details about the actual items purchased are transmitted to UBS, which means that the estimate cannot take into account your dietary preferences, for example, whether you order meat or a vegetarian dish, or whether you buy regional or imported products. It also cannot make a distinction between a regular grocery store or an organic food store. We expect the granularity of data to improve over time to be able to differentiate between organic and non-organic grocery stores. This might be frustrating. However, we're striking a balance between preserving the privacy of your data and giving you a detailed picture of your carbon footprint. Nevertheless, the carbon footprint estimate for grocery shopping and restaurants helps you compare your emissions in this category with emissions in other categories.

Flowers / Gardening products

Have you ever thought about the difference between regional versus overseas flowers? Cut flowers can have a high carbon footprint when they are grown in greenhouses and transported overseas (often by airplanes) while being cooled. Regionally-grown plants sold in the summer have a lower carbon footprint. These purchases are mapped to the same merchant category and the resulting estimated footprint is an average of overseas and regional flowers. You can buy flowers in a hardware store or in a dedicated flowers store. If you buy them in a hardware store, the estimated carbon footprint depends on what this type of store sells in addition e.g. building materials.

Buying an (electric) car

The production of a car is resource-heavy due to materials and processing. For the carbon footprint estimation, the methodology considers emissions from each stage of the product life cycle, from manufacturing and transportation to product use and disposal. This is true for both electric and carbon-fueled vehicles. That’s why buying a car will increase your carbon footprint a lot. The actual fuel consumption of the vehicle will then be taken into account on an ongoing basis, when you purchase gas/diesel at gas stations.

Second-hand purchases

While it’s not possible to track the individual products, such as whether a sweater is made from conventional or recycled wool, buying from second-hand stores is tracked and will make a difference for your carbon footprint. When you shop at second-hand shops, the emissions for producing the items are excluded, whereas the emissions for running the shop as well as transport and disposal, for example, are taken into account.

Electricity

The estimations for electricity are based on global averages and are not specific to Switzerland and do not distinguish whether you purchase conventional or renewable energy.

Managing your sustainability insights in Mobile Banking

How can you activate UBS key4 sustainability insights?

The sustainability insights are part of the UBS key4 insights. If you are a UBS client who is domiciled in Switzerland, you can find out more about UBS key4 insights. To activate UBS key4 insights, log in to your UBS Mobile Banking App and scroll down to the UBS key4 insights section on the home screen. You can find UBS key4 insights just underneath your favorite accounts, cards and portfolios. There, follow the instructions to activate UBS key4 insights.

How can you opt out from sustainability insights?

Which insights are related to your carbon footprint?

Data privacy

How is your personal data processed?

Does UBS extract any economic benefit from displaying your carbon footprint?

Disclaimer

The carbon footprint is calculated using the Åland Index™ which combines the cost of your purchase with the carbon footprint of that particular merchant category. This means that the index will be able to differ between whether you have been to the florist or the dentist, but not whether you bought roses or tulips. The index does not claim to calculate the exact footprint of your lifestyle but will give you a good understanding of your carbon emissions.

The Åland Index was first launched in 2016 by Ålandsbanken and has since then been further developed by Doconomy AB in Sweden. S&P Global Trucost is not an affiliate of Ålandsbanken or Doconomy AB and it disclaims all liability for any claims, losses, or damages in connection with use or application of its material in the calculations.

The purpose of the Åland Index is to raise awareness around how our lifestyle impacts the climate and to promote positive behavioral change, however past performance is not an indication or guarantee of future results. The index is reviewed by an independent third party, Ernst & Young, and updated regularly. Read more about the Åland Index and Doconomy AB's important workLink to Doconomy homepage.

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Search Title

Carbon footprint: simply explained

Introduction

In a nutshell

What is a carbon footprint?

Why is the carbon footprint useful?

How is your personal data processed?

Reducing the carbon footprint

How can you reduce your footprint?

What are we doing to reduce our footprint?

Deep Dive

Carbon footprint

The methodology

Managing your sustainability insights in Mobile Banking

Data privacy

Disclaimer

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