A company may know exactly how much electricity its offices consume and still have only a partial view of the emissions created by running them.
The missing information often sits with outside contractors. Cleaning crews arrive in supplier-owned vans and use products bought through their own procurement systems. Caterers select ingredients, operate kitchens and dispose of food waste. Landscaping teams bring machinery to the site. HVAC contractors replace parts and handle refrigerants. None of this activity disappears when the service is outsourced; much of it simply moves outside the client’s direct reporting boundary.
For sustainability teams, facilities services can therefore become an awkward blind spot. The contracts are visible. The spend is recorded. The physical activity behind the invoices is often much harder to see.
Outsourcing Changes the Reporting Boundary
Under the GHG Protocol’s Scope 3 framework, Scope 3 includes indirect emissions across a company’s value chain. Its “purchased goods and services” category covers the upstream emissions associated with services acquired during the reporting year. Depending on ownership and operational control, outsourced vehicles, equipment, waste and building services may also touch other Scope 3 categories.
This distinction matters because a contractor’s direct emissions may become part of its customer’s value-chain footprint. Fuel burned in a facilities provider’s van could be Scope 1 for the provider but Scope 3 for the organisation purchasing the service.
The scale can be substantial. CBRE reports that Scope 3 represents 99.6% of its total emissions. The company also says emissions from properties it manages for clients have fallen by 34% per square foot since 2019. Those figures describe CBRE’s own reporting boundary rather than the typical footprint of every facilities contract, but they demonstrate how little of a major property-services company’s climate impact may sit in Scope 1 and 2.
ISS Netherlands reported 26,079 tonnes of carbon emissions for 2023, of which almost 25,000 tonnes were in Scope 3. Purchased goods and services were among its largest sources, with food responsible for half the emissions in that category.
The examples also show why “facilities services” should not be treated as one emissions source. Catering has a different footprint from security. Landscaping involves different materials and equipment from HVAC maintenance. A single estimate based on total facilities spend hides those distinctions.
Why Invoice Data Soon Reaches Its Limit
Spend-based calculations are often the only practical starting point. A company applies an emissions factor to the amount paid for a service and uses the result as an initial estimate. This can reveal which contracts deserve attention first.
Problems begin when that estimate is treated as evidence of operational improvement.
A contract can become more expensive because of wage increases without creating more emissions. Another supplier may cut vehicle mileage while charging the same amount. Switching to lower-emission cleaning products could raise procurement costs and produce an apparent increase under a calculation based only on spend.
Comparisons between suppliers become equally unreliable when they use different boundaries. One contractor may report vehicle fuel and purchased materials. Another may include staff commuting, subcontractors and waste. The second number could look worse simply because it is more complete.
Facilities and procurement teams need to know what sits behind the total. Depending on the service, useful information may include:
- Fuel use or mileage for vehicles assigned to the contract
- Electricity and gas consumed at serviced locations
- Refrigerant type, quantity added and recorded leakage
- Cleaning products, paper goods and other consumables purchased
- Food volumes, menu composition and kitchen waste
- Waste weight, treatment route and contamination levels
- Equipment replaced, repaired or retained in service
A client rarely needs every data point from the first month. One or two material indicators, reported consistently, are more useful than an elaborate spreadsheet that suppliers cannot maintain.
Carbon Requirements Belong in the Service Specification
Sustainability requirements are difficult to add after a contract has been signed. The provider may not collect the requested information, or the cost of producing it may not have been included in the bid.
The remedy starts with recognising that outsourced services are not interchangeable. A basic overview of different types of service agreements illustrates the operational differences: cleaning work requires a defined service scope and supply arrangements, while HVAC work depends on equipment, maintenance schedules and response duties. Carbon reporting should be designed with the same attention to what the provider actually does.
For a cleaning contract, the specification might identify which products need reporting and whether concentrates, refill systems or reusable materials are preferred. An HVAC agreement could require records of refrigerant additions, equipment efficiency and preventable callouts. A catering provider may be asked for food-waste weights and the proportion of plant-based meals rather than a broad promise to operate sustainably.
Each requirement needs a baseline, reporting frequency and named data owner. It should also state whether performance will be measured as an absolute total or against activity, such as kilograms of waste per meal or vehicle emissions per service visit.
Without that detail, a carbon clause can become little more than an annual request for a sustainability statement.
Procurement Practice Is Beginning to Catch Up
Public procurement provides useful examples of how contract-level reporting is developing. The UK government’s updated Procurement Policy Note 006 applies Carbon Reduction Plan requirements to relevant central-government contracts worth more than £5 million per year.
Separate government guidance for carbon-reduction contract schedules identifies facilities-specific subjects including energy, water, waste, single-use plastics and transport. Importantly, it also says reporting requests should be relevant and proportionate, particularly where smaller suppliers are involved.
That final point is easy to overlook. A national facilities operator may have a dedicated carbon-accounting team. A local landscaping company may have fuel receipts and equipment records but no sustainability software. Rejecting the smaller supplier because it cannot produce a polished Scope 3 inventory may reduce competition without improving the underlying data.
A staged approach is more workable. During the first year, the supplier can establish a baseline from records it already holds. Later reporting can become more detailed where the additional effort supports a real purchasing or operational decision.
Managing Performance After the Tender
A supplier questionnaire completed during procurement is not a management system. Once the contract begins, facilities, procurement and sustainability teams still need to review the information together.
The most useful meetings are often about ordinary anomalies. Why did refrigerant use increase at one building? Why did waste tonnage fall while the contamination rate rose? Did vehicle emissions decline because routes improved, or because fewer service visits were completed?
Performance measures should also reflect changes in business activity. Absolute emissions may rise when a company opens another site. Emissions per square metre, service visit or meal can reveal whether delivery is becoming more efficient, although these intensity measures should not replace the absolute total.
Outsourced facilities work is close enough to everyday operations to influence, yet distant enough to escape attention. Bringing it into Scope 3 management requires fewer generic supplier pledges and more usable information about vehicles, materials, food, waste and equipment. That work starts before the first invoice arrives, in the service specification and the records the provider agrees to maintain.
