Verdium™ - verify your carbon reduction

Just one kilogram of Verdium saves up to thirty metric tons of CO2 equivalent, due to the carbon emissions impact of PGM mining¹. That means reducing carbon emissions by up to 97%, maximizing the sustainable impact of our customers’ operations, enabling them to produce more sustainable products, and lowering their Scope 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The validated environmental claim by UL Solutions is available for metals purchases, but also for final products such as Mobile Emissions Catalysts or Precious Metal Chemicals. The validated chain of custody extends to the final products sold by ECMS.

¹ Based on based on data from the International Platinum Group Metals Association Life Cycle Assessment 3 Fact Sheet

ECMS worked in close consultation with customers to design Verdium as an audited solution that can help customer take measurable strides towards their sustainability goals.

GHG Protocol establishes comprehensive global standardized frameworks to measure and manage greenhouse gas emissions from private and public sector operations, value chains and mitigation actions.

It is a method of quantifying a company’s impact on climate change, using three categories to account for the various ways that companies can impact the atmosphere. Within this framework, emissions are classified as Scope 1, 2 or 3. This approach has gained momentum following the 2015 Paris Agreement.

The Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, a group led by the finance industry, was set up in the same year to encourage companies to publish details about any environmental risks in the public domain. Sustainability and climate related disclosures have become an important part of the reporting landscape.

Companies are now aiming to decarbonize their supply chains by tackling scope 3 emissions (indirect emissions along the value chain). Scope 3 emissions are difficult for companies to manage because they reside outside the companies’ direct control.

As industry confronts the scope of global climate challenge, regulation by bodies such as the Securities & Exchange Commission and European Sustainability Reporting Standards will require increased transparency and disclosure on climate-related metrics.

Mass balance is one of several chain-of-custody models. It is based on the attribution of specific properties of input materials in a mixture of inputs to specific output materials. Chain of custody models were developed within the chemical and other industries over the years and formally defined in 2020 with ISO 22095. The current ISO standard describes mass balance as a “chain of custody” model in which materials or products with a set of specified characteristics are mixed according to defined criteria with materials or products without that set of characteristics.

Yes, it has been applied already for a long time in the wood (Forest Stewardship Council®) and palm oil (Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil™) industries, for example. Today, many other industries utilize similar approaches, like cotton textiles (Better Cotton™) or cocoa (UTZ).

Verdium has been independently validated by UL Solutions, a global safety science company based in Northbrook, Illinois. It is certified to UL Solutions’ mass balance chain of custody (CoC) standard UL 2809-1, the Environmental Claim Validation Procedure for Defined Source Content, which is in accordance with CoC design and models specified in ISO 22095. The validation process includes annual CoC audits and site visits by UL Solutions.

PGM customers in Europe and the United States can purchase Verdium. Customers will receive the same quality recycled metal from ECMS, but with Verdium, they can verify their carbon reduction. Documented verification will confirm the amount of recycled metals purchased and applied to select end products, which can be traced to a concrete carbon metric.