Our facilities management and cleaning page covers who asks cleaning firms for Carbon Reduction Plans and where the boundary with clients' buildings sits. This post is the practical part: what to collect, how to count chemicals and consumables, and what a typical footprint looks like.
The three things that matter
- Vans. Fuel for vans you own or lease is Scope 1. Use litres from fuel cards. If you only have mileage, the 2026 factor for an average diesel van is 0.41386 kg CO2e per mile.
- People moving between sites. Supervisors and mobile cleaners driving their own cars between client sites are business travel, which you take from mileage claims. Getting to their regular site at the start of a shift is commuting, which you estimate with a short staff survey. Our post on company cars and grey fleet covers the mileage side.
- What you buy. Chemicals, paper products, bin liners, cloths and equipment. None of it is required in a PPN 006 plan, but in the example below it is bigger than the vans, and customer questionnaires may ask about it.
Counting chemicals and consumables
If your product supplier can't give you a carbon figure for what it sells you, start with the spend-based method: what you spent, net of VAT, multiplied by Defra's figure for that kind of product. The latest (2023) multipliers for the usual cleaning purchases:
| What you buy | Defra category | kg CO2e per £ |
|---|---|---|
| Detergents, disinfectants, polishes | Soap and detergents, cleaning and polishing preparations, perfumes and toilet preparations | 0.73 |
| Paper towels, toilet rolls, blue roll | Paper and paper products | 0.67 |
| Bin liners, gloves, plastic bottles and spray heads | Rubber and plastic products | 0.64 |
Spend-based figures move with prices as well as emissions, so they are a starting point. Once you know which supplier makes up most of the total, ask that supplier for its own figures. Our guide to purchased goods and services explains how to improve the estimate step by step.
A worked example
A commercial cleaning company with five vans, supervisors who drive between client sites, and one small office. Its year, with 2026 factors:
| Source | Scope | kg CO2e |
|---|---|---|
| Van diesel, 9,000 litres | Scope 1 | 23,252 |
| Office electricity, 6,000 kWh | Scope 2 | 786 |
| Supervisors' mileage between sites in their own cars, 18,000 miles | Scope 3, category 6 | 4,806 |
| Cleaning chemicals, £25,000 | Scope 3, category 1 | 18,207 |
| Paper towels and toilet rolls supplied to clients, £15,000 | Scope 3, category 1 | 10,037 |
| Bin liners and plastic consumables, £5,000 | Scope 3, category 1 | 3,219 |
| Total | 60,306 kg, or 60.31 tonnes |
In this example the consumables add up to 31.46 tonnes against 23.25 tonnes for the vans. A plan that only covers the PPN 006 categories would miss a large share of the real footprint, which is why NHS contracts of £5 million a year or more will ask for all relevant Scope 3 from April 2027.
What cuts it
- Electric vans for mobile teams. In 2026 an average battery electric van is 0.06856 kg CO2e per mile from grid charging, against 0.41386 for diesel.
- Routing. Grouping clients by area cuts both van miles and supervisors' mileage claims.
- Buying less product. Correct dilution and dosing systems mean fewer litres bought, and a spend-based estimate falls with them.
How Carbon Recycling helps
Import your fuel cards and mileage claims from a spreadsheet, and upload your purchase ledger (or connect Xero, QuickBooks, Sage or FreeAgent) so Carbon Recycling suggests a Defra multiplier for each account, chemicals and paper included. Tag depots as sites to compare them. On the Growth plan you can send your main product supplier a data request: they reply through a secure link, and you choose whether their figure replaces the spend estimate. When a client sends a questionnaire, the free questionnaire answer bank fills in model answers from your own figures.