Improving GHG inventory for target-setting

The sustainability team at Grupo Boticário worked with SINAI's Climate team to conduct a relevance and materiality assessment, with the goal of identifying scope 3 emission sources and activity data to develop a comprehensive GHG inventory. The biggest challenge during the inventory development process was data collection for new scope 3 emission sources. SINAI supported this by mapping the necessary calculation methodologies and emission factors, as well as identifying data sources and collection processes for Grupo Boticário to adopt.

Considering all emission scopes, scope 3 emissions now represent over 97% of the company's emissions, and according to the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), if scope 3 emissions exceed 40% of total emissions, a reduction target will also be required. The required activity data had to be collected from the purchasing, Research & Development (R&D), financial and sales teams, especially for downstream emissions, which usually require additional assumptions.

SINAI was able to calculate emissions from all relevant emission sources, and Grupo Boticário obtained its GHG inventory fully verified by a verification body.

Improving Scope 3 Inventory

Before the digitization of the inventory, Grupo Boticário accounted for 4 scope 3 categories, which represented 67% of its total emissions. Categories 4, 5, 6, and 7 were considered, as they had accessible emission factors available in the Brazilian GHG Protocol Program, a free and widely used tool. However, with the support of SINAI's Climate team, a relevance and materiality assessment was conducted, which identified 6 additional relevant categories for their business. The SINAI Climate team supported Grupo Boticário in mapping appropriate emission factors and defining accounting assumptions for some categories, increasing the scope 3 participation to 97% of the organization's total GHG emissions.

To support Grupo Boticário in its journey, SINAI also developed an improvement plan for scope 3, transitioning from expense-based methodologies to mass data calculations, especially in categories that had a significant impact on the scope 3 inventory. In the coming years, Grupo Boticário's main goal will be to define a decarbonization strategy for its value chain, including assessing supplier engagement, to improve the accuracy of scope 3 and develop joint efforts with its suppliers to reduce emissions in its value chain.

Software Integration in the Climate Agenda

Grupo Boticário has a climate agenda that includes multiple teams, and they need a single source of truth where different teams can collaborate. SINAI's software was crucial in centralizing information around historical emissions, baseline emissions, and mitigation projects that involved collaboration from sustainability, operations, finance and R&D teams to gather the necessary inputs and the module results, improving communication efficiency between teams.‍

Next steps: Advancing in the Decarbonization Journey

With SINAI, Grupo Boticário has completed a comprehensive and verified inventory of scope 1, 2, and 3 GHG emissions in a manageable and automated carbon accounting system. This will be the foundation for Grupo Boticário to understand its future emissions, assess mitigation strategies, and create a decarbonization plan.

Recently, Grupo Boticário signed the Commitment Letter with SBTi for the definition of decarbonization targets. These targets will be defined based on potential decarbonization scenarios that will be built within the SINAI platform. These scenarios will enable Grupo Boticário to identify the most cost-effective strategies to achieve science-based targets while remaining competitive and positioning themselves as climate agenda leaders within their industry.