The Usage section captures the environmental impact of your product during its use phase — the energy and consumables it needs while in operation. For example, a washing machine uses electricity every time it runs, and a printer uses ink cartridges throughout its life. These impacts are part of your product’s overall footprint.

To calculate these impacts, you need to tell Root three things: the product’s expected lifespan, what energy it uses, and what consumables it consumes.

Usage data is recorded at the product level. For each product, you specify:

These are simple yes/no toggles. Once you turn them on, Root asks for the details.

Usage is an optional feature. Your company administrator can enable or disable it in the company settings. If usage is disabled, the section will show an “out of scope” message and the data won’t be included in impact calculations.

Navigate to a product and open its Usage tab. You’ll see the current status:

Enter the expected lifespan of the product. This is used to scale the usage impact over the product’s lifetime.

You can add optional notes to explain your lifespan assumption (e.g. “Based on industry average of 10 years”).

Toggle Utilities used to yes or no (in Settings).

If yes, enter the electricity amount in kWh that the product consumes over its lifetime. Root will use a global electricity dataset to calculate the impact.

You can add optional notes to explain the electricity figure.

Toggle Consumables used to yes or no (in Settings).

If yes, you’ll need to add each consumable the product uses during its lifetime. For each consumable, provide:

The consumables you reference here must already be matched to impact datasets in the Consumables matching section. Each consumable needs both a direct impact dataset and an end-of-life dataset to be included in the calculation.

Once all required fields are filled, the product’s usage status changes to “complete” and Root includes the usage impact in the product’s overall footprint.

Root checks the following:

If any of these conditions are not met, the status remains “incomplete.”

Electricity impact:

Impact = electricity dataset impact factor × electricity amount (kWh) × number of products sold

Root uses a global low-voltage electricity dataset for this calculation.

Consumable impact:

Impact = (direct impact + end-of-life impact) × consumable amount × number of products sold × conversion factor

Each consumable’s impact includes both its production footprint and its disposal footprint.

The total usage impact for a product is the sum of its electricity impact and all consumable impacts.

If a product is a proxy (a simplified copy of another product), it inherits its usage data from the source product. You cannot edit usage on a proxy — instead, navigate to the source product to make changes.

Product usage emissions are always allocated to Scope 3.11 (use of sold products).

There are no dependencies on facility type or other settings — all usage-phase impact (electricity consumption and consumable use) goes to the same scope category.

This category covers the emissions generated by your products during their use phase at the customer’s site. It includes both the energy the product consumes and the production and disposal of any consumables it requires.

Note that Usage must be enabled in your company settings for these emissions to be included in your footprint. If Usage is disabled, no Scope 3.11 emissions will appear in your GHG report.