Stories from SHAPE: How ecosystem collaboration reshaped Kiilto’s perspective on Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) data

‍When Kiilto joined the Data Driven Sustainability Management (DDSM) project in 2023, they were already relatively mature in their sustainability data journey. In the DDSM co-research project coordinated by Åbo Akademi University, Kiilto set out to explore how their collected data could be utilized for identifying and building new business opportunities around sustainability.

‍Kiilto is a Finnish family-owned company specializing in household and professional chemicals. With EU regulations increasingly requiring transparency and traceability on product environmental performance across the supply chain, sustainability data management had long before the project kick-off become an integral part of their operations.

‍ "Every company nowadays is at least thinking about producing product carbon footprint reports," says Saku Haukijärvi, Technology and Sustainability Data Manager at Kiilto. "But we wanted to see if sustainability data could also be utilized as a basis for different kinds of business models."

The answer had started taking shape already through an existing pilot Kiilto brought into the DDSM project as a reference case, with a refill-based service model of cleaning detergents for one of their customers.

"We were able to reduce the carbon footprint of the products they were using with 55 percent, since we were able to reuse the packaging over and over again," Saku explains, "compared to always shipping out new bottles that would directly end up in recycling."

‍Discovering new perspectives on how to utilize sustainability data

Company visits and consortium meetings were a regular part of the DDSM project to share knowledge between partners. During one such visit to ABB in Porvoo, the conversation turned to how product carbon footprint (PCF) data could be utilized to drive business value.

PCF data is becoming a rising expectation as sustainability disclosure requirements tighten and customers increasingly factor environmental performance into procurement decisions. Saku explains that at the time, Kiilto had primarily been focused on having all the figures ready to deliver on customer expectations.

However, the discussion brought a practical limitation into focus. PCF results across companies are rarely directly comparable, given differences in standards, system boundaries and calculation methods.

This insight revealed a different approach: to use the data for internal processes to identify which factors are driving emissions and then selecting which ones to tackle.

"That was kind of an aha-moment," Saku says. "To look at it the other way around, how to improve our own operations, compared to how to just blindly try to prove to our customers that this is the best solution."

Experience flows both ways in an ecosystem

‍For Kiilto, some of the most valuable moments in the DDSM project happened outside the formal agenda.

"I really want to underline the importance of those informal discussions," Saku says. "Not just the company presentations but discussing these things and understanding that we are actually working with the same problems, no matter what the industry or company is."

Having already built relatively mature processes around sustainability data management, Kiilto was in a position to share practical experience with partners who were earlier in that journey, while also gaining perspectives on how others were approaching the same challenges across different industries.

"Every time that companies get together to work on any issue, good things come out at the end," Saku reflects. "Learning together, by doing together."

Kiilto participated in the Data Driven Sustainability Management project as part of the SHAPE Ecosystem, coordinated by Åbo Akademi University. The project ran from 2023-2025.