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Reducing Scope 3 emissions requires changes to the products, ingredients and materials companies buy, and how they are produced. Better reporting helps you understand the challenge. However, progress comes when procurement teams can buy ingredients, materials and services with both an auditable lower carbon footprint and an emissions reduction plan.
That is difficult when supply chains are complex and carbon data is averaged across broad product categories. A supplier may already have abetter-performing farm group, production site or sourcing route, yet customers may have no practical way to identify or buy it.
Low-carbon supply creates that route. By connecting supplier-specific data, defined volumes and clear evidence, companies can turn Scope 3 targets into purchasing decisions. If you’re a supplier, you gain a stronger commercial reason to keep decarbonizing. If you’re a buyer, you gain credible progress linked to the Scope 3 goods you’ve purchased.
Why Scope 3 can be difficult to reduce
Scope 3 covers emissions across a company’s value chain, including purchased goods and services. Most, if not all, of those emissions sit outside the company’s direct control, so reductions depend on decisions made by suppliers, processors, logistics partners and customers.
Those commercial relationships are already changing. Buyer demand is already changing how companies work with suppliers. In 2025, members of CDP’s Supply Chain programme requested environmental data from nearly 45,000 companies across 110 countries, while more than 19,200 businesses disclosed in response to at least one buyer request. Nearly 80% of large companies disclosing through CDP now engage their suppliers. This gives procurement teams a growing role in turning Scope 3 targets into coordinated action across the supply chain.
Why average emissions data slows action
Industry averages and spend-based estimates are useful for establishing your starting point. However, their limitation appears when a buyer wants to choose between suppliers or reward a specific improvement. An average cannot show whether one farm changed fertiliser use, one factory switched energy source or one logistics route reduced fuel consumption.
This can make genuine progress commercially invisible. It also makes reporting harder to maintain. Deloitte UK found that 69% of the FTSE 100 list of companies adjusted previously reported sustainability metrics in 2025. Of the 59 companies making GHG-related adjustments, 75% had adjusted Scope 3 data. Better supplier information helps companies move towards data that reflects real products and purchasing choices.
How low-carbon supply creates a practical Scope 3 reductions route
Low-carbon supply is a defined volume of a product, ingredient or material with a lower carbon footprint than an agreed comparison point. The reduction should come from real changes in farming, processing, energy, transport or another relevant part of production.
If, for example, you’re a food manufacturer, you might source sugar from a supply route using lower-emission farming and processing. Your dairy buyer might support milk from farms introducing methane and feed-efficiency measures. A parts manufacturer might choose components or materials from a plant using lower-carbon energy. In each case, procurement helps create demand for better-performing supply.
A practical programme begins with the largest emissions sources, identifies suppliers able to act and agrees what evidence will demonstrate progress. A peer-reviewed 2025 study published in Communications Earth & Environment found that 56–70% of the Scope 3 emissions covered by current science-based guidance occur within the first two tiers of supply. That makes focused supplier action a meaningful place to begin, before expanding deeper into the value chain.
Why traceability and chain of custody are important
Your product with a lower carbon footprint becomes more useful when buyers can see what it relates to. Traceability connects the data to a source, site, process or supply route. Chain of custody records how the associated lower-carbon value moves from you to your customer.
The right approach depends on the supply chain. Some products can remain physically segregated. Others move through shared storage and processing, where mass balance may provide a more scalable option. Whichever model is used, the volume sold should remain connected to eligible supply, with clear boundaries, allocation rules, inventory controls and transaction records.
What buyers need from suppliers
Your customers’ sustainable procurement teams need an offer they can understand, assess and use. That means your customer-ready low-carbon offerings should explain:
1. What product and volume are available.
2. How you calculated the carbon footprint.
3. How you created the reduction and what comparison was used.
4. How your supply and its attributes are traced or transferred.
5. What evidence your buyer receives after the transaction.
Clear answers make it easier for sustainability, procurement and commercial teams to reach the same decision. They also help you to move the conversation from a technical calculation to product value, availability and customer need.
How we support Scope 3 progress
We built Segmos to connect your lower-carbon production with customers who are ready to buy it. We help you to identify valuable reductions, structure low-carbon volumes, select the right chain-of-custody approach and present each offering with the information buyers need.
That provides you with a route to differentiation and potential new revenue. It gives your customers’ buyers access to credible low-carbon supply that can support procurement decisions and Scope 3 reporting. Most importantly, it creates a commercial reason for both sides to keep investing in decarbonisation progress.
If your customers are asking for credible Scope 3 progress, we can help you turn low-carbon supply into offerings they can understand, buy and report. Book a call and we will walk you through how Segmos works in practice.
