Cradle to gate

A cradle-to-gate footprint covers a product from its raw materials up to the moment it leaves the factory gate, and stops there.

It includes growing or extracting materials, processing them, inbound transport, manufacturing and packaging. It leaves out distribution to customers, the use of the product and what happens at the end of its life.

Suppliers usually share cradle-to-gate footprints, because that is the part of the life they can measure, and brands add the later stages themselves. It is a partial footprint, so it must say so clearly.