ISO 14067 Explained: The Carbon Footprint Standard Behind Our Acoustic Panels

Short version: ISO 14067 is the international standard for calculating the carbon footprint of a product — the greenhouse gases emitted across its life, expressed in kilograms of CO₂-equivalent. It is a method, not a label. The recycled-PET acoustic panels used inside ClarityCastle pods have a life-cycle carbon footprint study prepared to ISO 14067:2018 and PAS 2050:2011, with a result of 3.12 tonnes of CO₂e per tonne of panel across six life-cycle stages. This page explains what that number means, what it does not, and why buyers are starting to ask for it.

What does ISO 14067 stand for?

ISO 14067:2018 is titled “Greenhouse gases — Carbon footprint of products — Requirements and guidelines for quantification.” It is published by ISO, the International Organization for Standardization in Geneva, and was developed by technical committee ISO/TC 207/SC 7, the group responsible for greenhouse-gas management standards. It first appeared in 2013 as a technical specification (ISO/TS 14067) and became a full international standard in August 2018. The 2018 edition is currently under review, with a revised version (ISO/WD 14067.2) in development, and the GHG Protocol and ISO have formed a joint working group to harmonize product-level carbon accounting, with GHG Protocol naming its participants in February 2026.

ISO 14067 sits inside a family of standards. It builds on ISO 14040 and ISO 14044, the general life-cycle assessment (LCA) standards, but looks at a single impact category: climate change. It is distinct from ISO 14064-1, which covers an organization’s footprint rather than a product’s, and from ISO 14025, which governs Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). Communicating a footprint publicly is handled by yet another standard, ISO 14026.

What a product carbon footprint actually is

ISO 14067 defines the carbon footprint of a product (CFP) as the sum of greenhouse-gas emissions and removals in a product system, expressed as CO₂ equivalents. “CO₂ equivalent” converts every gas into the warming effect of carbon dioxide using Global Warming Potential factors from the IPCC — methane, for example, counts for roughly 28–30 times its weight in CO₂ over a 100-year horizon.

The study has to declare a functional unit (what quantity of product the number refers to) and a system boundary (which life-cycle stages are counted). The two common boundaries are:

Cradle-to-gate — raw materials through the factory gate. Typical for business-to-business components.
Cradle-to-grave — adds transport to the customer, the use phase and end-of-life.

A study that covers only some stages is called a partial CFP under the standard, and must say so.

Is ISO 14067 a certification?

Not by itself. ISO 14067 tells you how to calculate; it does not issue a mark. A company can commission a study, and can then have it independently verified by a third party — bodies such as SGS, TÜV SÜD, BSI, DNV or Carbon Trust offer this, working to ISO 14064-3 and, in the United States, under accreditation from ANAB. A verified footprint is stronger than a self-declared one, and both are different from an EPD, which is a broader, registered declaration that reports the carbon result alongside other impacts.

The ISO 14067 result for our acoustic panels

The acoustic panels lining every ClarityCastle pod are polyester (PET) felt, verified by SCS Global Services in 2024 to contain a minimum of 60 percent post-consumer recycled content. In 2023 the panel manufacturer commissioned a life-cycle carbon footprint study of its 2022 production, prepared by an environmental consultancy using ISO 14067:2018 and PAS 2050:2011 as the methodology. The study’s conclusions:

Boundary: cradle-to-grave, across six stages — raw-material acquisition, raw-material transport, production, product transport, product use and product recycling.
Result: 3.1168 tonnes of CO₂e per tonne of finished panel.

For scale, using the U.S. EPA’s equivalency factors, one tonne of CO₂e is roughly what a typical gasoline car emits over 2,500 miles. That puts a tonne of panel at about 7,900 miles of driving.

Three honest caveats. This is a panel footprint, not a whole-pod footprint; steel, glass, electronics and shipping are not in it. It is a study prepared to the ISO 14067 method, and we have not represented it as third-party verified. And it is one manufacturer’s 2022 data. For comparison, published EPDs for other PET acoustic felt products land in a similar range: one U.S. manufacturer’s January 2026 EPD for a 3.18 kg/m² felt panel declares 8.80 kg CO₂e per square metre for production alone (stages A1–A3) and about 11.9 kg CO₂e including transport, installation and end-of-life, which works out to roughly 2.8–3.7 tonnes per tonne.

Why buyers are asking for this

LEED. LEED v4.1 awards points for products with EPDs, and project teams may include furniture in that count. LEED v5, which becomes the only option for new commercial BD+C, ID+C and O+M registrations on July 1, 2027, folds carbon into its Building Product Selection & Procurement credit, with extra recognition for products showing 20 percent and 40 percent GWP reductions against a baseline. An ISO 14067 study is the carbon core of that documentation.
Corporate Scope 3 reporting. Under the GHG Protocol, the most accurate way for a company to report emissions from purchased goods (Scope 3, Category 1) is supplier-specific, product-level cradle-to-gate data. A product carbon footprint is exactly that input.
Regulation is moving toward products. The EU’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation lists furniture as a priority category for 2028, with carbon footprint among the parameters and a Digital Product Passport for each product. Carbon border rules (CBAM) currently cover steel and cement rather than furniture, but the direction is clear.
Furniture is a blind spot. A study by architecture firm MSR Design of 48 commercial-furniture EPDs and environmental data sheets found workstations at roughly 100–575 kg CO₂e each, task and conference seating at roughly 35–115 kg and lounge sofas at roughly 90–365 kg, and showed that leaving furniture out of a building’s embodied-carbon calculation missed 56 percent of the total in one case study. Fit-out carbon is now on the spreadsheet.

Fun facts

ISO has 175 national member bodies, 272 technical committees and about 180 staff in Geneva, and had published 26,116 standards and documents as of its 2025 figures.
PAS 2050, the British standard cited alongside ISO 14067 in our panel study, was first issued in October 2008 and is widely regarded as the first product carbon footprint standard used internationally.
The revision that produced the 2018 edition of ISO 14067 worked through more than 530 comments from national bodies on the way from technical specification to full standard.
One tonne of CO₂ is about what an acre of average U.S. forest absorbs in a year, per the EPA’s equivalency calculator.

Frequently asked questions

Can you give me a carbon footprint for a whole pod?

Not yet as a verified figure. We are looking into an Environmental Product Declaration for the pods, which would cover the complete product. In the meantime we can share the panel study and material specifications so your consultant can model the rest.

What is the difference between ISO 14067 and an EPD?

An EPD (ISO 14025, with EN 15804 or ISO 21930 for construction products) is a registered, third-party-verified declaration covering several environmental impacts. ISO 14067 is the method for one of those impacts — climate change — and can be used on its own or as an input to an EPD.

Does "recycled" automatically mean low carbon?

Usually lower, not zero. Recycled PET avoids the emissions of making virgin polyester, but melting, spinning, pressing and transporting the felt still count. That is why the standard requires the full stage-by-stage accounting rather than a single material claim.