Your scope 3.1 rests on spend ratios. It can rest on LCAs.

In watchmaking, most of a house's footprint is made outside the house. CadranZero gathers in one place the life cycle assessments declared by your suppliers, and measures how much of your scope 3.1 finally rests on real data.

The problem is not the calculation, it is the data

A watch house buys cases, dials, hands, movements, straps and surface treatments. That is where its footprint lies, and precisely where it has no grip. For want of better, category 3.1 is calculated per franc spent: a purchase amount multiplied by a sector ratio.

This method has a flaw that disqualifies it for steering: the figure does not move when a supplier genuinely improves their process. It moves only if you buy less, or cheaper. In other words, it measures your spending, not your emissions.

The usual answer is the questionnaire. Every house sends its own, every supplier gets the same questions ten times in ten formats, and no one can compare the answers. The supplier wears out, the house collects declarations it cannot aggregate.

The quality pyramid, and what it refuses to count

Every line of your scope 3.1 carries a quality level, and the total is never read without it. Two houses with the same total do not stand on the same ground.

Real data (LCA): your supplier calculated the part's footprint in the platform and shared it with you.
Internal LCA (declared): they carried out their analysis elsewhere and declare the result.
House estimate: you reconstructed the footprint yourself, from assumptions.
Monetary estimate: the spend-based ratio, when nothing else is left.

Real data replaces an estimate as soon as a purchase volume is entered for the part. The substitution is automatic and visible: you watch the estimated share recede.

A questionnaire is not a level of this pyramid. An answer is a declaration, not a footprint: it counts only the day it feeds a calculation. We would rather say so than let it be assumed.

Primary coverage, the indicator that really counts

Primary coverage is the share of your scope 3.1 that rests on data from the supplier: the first two levels, and only those. An estimate you made yourself, however careful, does not count towards it.

It reads three ways, and all three are needed: by emissions (what share of your tonnes), by spending (what share of your purchases) and by number of suppliers. A 60 % emissions coverage obtained from three suppliers is not steered like the same coverage obtained from a hundred.

This is the indicator to put in a report, because it is the only one that rises as knowledge rises, and does not move when prices move.

Where to act first

Emissions concentrate: a handful of suppliers account for most of the total. The dashboard ranks them and points to those whose conversion would move your coverage the most. It is a list of calls to make, not a report to file.

It also flags the most common waste: an LCA a supplier has shared with you but for which no purchase volume is entered. The data is there, given, and does not count yet.

Data has an age

Beyond three years, an LCA remains real data, but it deserves to be revalidated with its author: a process changes, an energy supplier changes, a site relocates. The lines concerned are marked « to refresh », and the share they represent is displayed.

A platform that never ages its data would leave you defending, before an auditor, a figure whose origin no one can trace.

What your suppliers see, and what they do not have to show you

The supplier decides, part by part, what each house may see: the figure alone, the breakdown by life cycle stage, or the full calculation register. The most detailed level requires their explicit confirmation, and any share can be revoked in one click.

Their company carbon inventory is never visible to you, and no price information is asked of them: there is no cost field at all on their side. This asymmetry is not a concession, it is what makes them declare.

For you, the effect is direct: your suppliers answer, because answering costs them neither money nor trade secrets.

What the platform brings beyond the calculation

A database of 26,954 emission factors, drawn from ADEME's Base Carbone and the Swiss federal administration's LCI database, with the source and reference location cited on every line. That is what lets you defend a figure before an auditor rather than merely assert it.

Regulatory monitoring covering 79 Swiss and European texts, filtered for watchmaking and sorted by deadline, so that compliance is not discovered the day it applies.

And the calculation itself follows the methodological framework of the ISO 14040 and 14044 standards for life cycle assessments, and the GHG Protocol for company inventories.

How to start

House accounts are opened one at a time, after a conversation: we want to know what perimeter you consolidate and how many suppliers you intend to invite, because that is what determines whether the platform will be useful to you.

Then you invite your suppliers. Those already on the platform share their existing LCAs with you, with nothing to recalculate.

Further reading: the fifteen scope 3 categories · what your suppliers see · the calculation methodology · security and hosting · pricing · the resource centre