American Seafoods
At a Glance
Industry
Food Services
Project Types
Data Analysis, Goals/Targets, Sustainability and Energy Management Strategy
Year
2023
Location
Seattle, WA
Summary
Reporting to the Chief Sustainability Officer at American Seafoods, Fredrick Selby helped create a comprehensive greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory, increasing potential for future carbon reductions.
Goals
Primary Goals:
- Build out a comprehensive Scope 1, 2, and 3 GHG inventory for fiscal years 2021 and 2022
- Identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas that were previously overlooked in carbon accounting
- Find areas for process improvement and automation opportunities
- Identify short- and medium-term actions to evaluate the feasibility of Science-Based Targets (SBT)
Secondary Goals:
- Identify operational opportunities with potential for shifts toward circularity
- Evaluate baseline scenarios for future carbon reductions
Solutions
Fredrick’s approach to achieving these goals was anchored in two primary activities: data collection and stakeholder engagement.
Fredrick’s team requested and collected data from multiple sources, internally and externally. They accessed financial reports, invoicing and related systems, and analyzed spreadsheets and reports from vendors and suppliers. With each new dataset came a unique set of challenges and each request fulfilled led to another request.
Internal stakeholders ranged from boat captains and engineers to American Seafoods executives, department leads, warehouse and operations crew, and sales and marketing staff across the organization. They also communicated and met with external vendors and suppliers responsible for cold storage, transportation and logistics providers, landlords, utilities, recyclers, food distributors and many others.
Potential Impact
The biggest insight that resulted from their creation of a more comprehensive GHG inventory is that now more than 20% of American Seafoods’ carbon footprint can be attributed to non-marine fuel sources. This counters a long-held narrative that fuel accounts for the overwhelming majority of emissions, and therefore not much can be done to reduce emissions until alternative fuel technologies become commercially viable.
This, along with an internal groundswell to lead the industry in this domain, positions American Seafoods to begin to set science-based reduction goals explicitly focused on energy sources, logistics and transportation, packaging and waste, cold storage, and capital projects.