Most food businesses working with sustainability today are already reporting Scope 3 emissions. The calculations are done, the numbers exist, and the spreadsheets look reasonable. And internally, that often feels like the hard part is over.
But in practice, Scope 3 problems rarely show up when you calculate emissions. They show up later, when someone else starts asking questions. Not what your Scope 3 emissions are, but how you arrived at them, what they’re based on, and how confident you are in the result.
That difference—between reporting and readiness—is where many teams quietly feel exposed.
Reporting Scope 3 doesn’t guarantee readiness
Internally, Scope 3 data is often used to:
• Track progress year over year
• Inform menu, sourcing, or procurement decisions
• Support internal sustainability targets
In that context, “good enough” is often good enough. External scrutiny works differently.
Once Scope 3 data is used for:
• CSRD reporting
• Client questionnaires
• RFPs and procurement processes
• Sustainability claims or labels
• Investor or partner due diligence
…the bar changes.
The question is no longer “does this roughly reflect reality?”, but rather “would this stand up if someone challenged it?” That’s where many food businesses start to hesitate.
The weak spots that rarely feel risky at first
Most Scope 3 issues aren’t dramatic mistakes, but sensible shortcuts that made sense at the time. Until they didn’t.
Some of the most common pressure points we see in food-related Scope 3 data include:
Heavy use of averages
Category averages are often necessary, especially early on. But when large parts of your footprint rely on them, the next question becomes unavoidable: how representative are they for your actual sourcing and recipes?
Missing or partial supplier data
Supplier-specific data is hard to get. Many teams compensate with assumptions or proxies.
That works, until someone asks which suppliers are covered, which aren’t, and why.
Assumptions that live in people’s heads
• Why was this dataset chosen?
• Why does this boundary stop here?
• Why was this ingredient treated differently?
If the answers aren’t written down, they tend to disappear the moment someone leaves the room.
Ingredient-level gaps hidden by totals
High-level totals can look stable even when important details underneath are shaky. This often becomes visible only when teams try to explain which ingredients or categories actually drive change.
None of this means your data is “wrong”. It means it may be hard to defend without rework.
The questions that tend to come later
When Scope 3 data is reviewed externally, the conversation often shifts in predictable ways.
Teams get asked things like:
• What changed since last year, and why?
• Which assumptions have the biggest impact on the total?
• How confident are you in supplier-specific values versus averages?
• How do procurement and sustainability interpret these numbers together?
These may seem like trick questions, but they’re perfectly normal follow-ups once Scope 3 data is treated as decision-grade information. However, they’re difficult to answer convincingly if the data wasn’t built with that level of scrutiny in mind.
A quiet reality check
If you’re already reporting Scope 3, it’s worth pausing on a few uncomfortable but practical questions:
• Could you explain your Scope 3 assumptions to someone outside the sustainability team without caveats?
• If procurement questioned a supplier-specific value, could you show how it was derived?
• Would finance interpret your emissions data the same way you do?
• If parts of the calculation changed tomorrow, would you know which decisions are affected?
There’s no universal threshold for “ready”. But if these questions feel hard to answer confidently, that’s usually a signal rather than a failure.
Why this matters now (even without new regulations)
This isn’t about predicting future regulation or speculating on enforcement.
Scope 3 data is already being used to:
• Support commercial decisions
• Respond to client and tender requirements
• Compare sourcing and menu scenarios
• Demonstrate credibility beyond internal reporting
When data has to be revisited late in the process, the cost shows up as delays, internal friction, and uncertainty around what can be shared externally.
Many teams only encounter this once the data leaves the sustainability function.
Where teams tend to get stuck
Interestingly, most teams struggling with Scope 3 readiness aren’t lacking tools or effort.
They’re stuck in the gap between:
• Calculating emissions, and
• Trusting the results enough to stand behind them externally
That gap often shows up as:
• Re-running numbers to answer slightly different questions
• Hesitating to publish or label
• Over-explaining methodology instead of relying on it
• Feeling unsure which improvements actually matter most
At that point, the problem is no longer how to calculate Scope 3 but how to validate it.
Before you move forward
If you’re already reporting Scope 3, the next step usually is to check whether:
• Your assumptions are clear
• Your data quality matches how the numbers will be used
• Your team is aligned on what the results actually mean
That’s typically where food businesses stop guessing and start validating.
If this article felt a little too familiar, that’s usually the sign it’s worth looking closer. Because the question isn’t whether you have Scope 3 data, but whether you’re ready to stand behind it.
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