We calculated the carbon footprint of our own product. Here’s what we found.

Most supplement companies do not publish a carbon footprint. The ones that do often share a round number without methodology, assumptions, or a way to inspect the math. We wanted to do this differently.

So we built a cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment of one year of Winnow, from raw probiotic fermentation to delivery at your door, and we are publishing the model behind it. That includes the assumptions, the emission factors, the code, and the resulting numbers.

What surprised us was not that the footprint was especially large or small. It was where it came from.

What we measured

Our functional unit was one year of daily use: 360 capsules delivered to a U.S. address.

The system boundary was cradle-to-grave. It included raw ingredient production, capsule manufacture, packaging production, fill and finish, parcel shipping, and end-of-life disposal using standard U.S. recycling assumptions.

Per capsule, the product includes:

• 400 mg freeze-dried probiotic blend
• 1000 g raw potato starch and organic rice fiber
• 160 mg HPMC capsule shell

The packaging system includes:

• Starter kit: 120 cc amber glass bottle, tin plate cap, and cardboard box
• Refill: compostable pouch and small cardboard shipper

The result

This is an ISO 14040/14044-framed analysis using literature-based emission factors.

The pattern is clear.

The 90-day plan emits 46% less CO₂e than the 30-day plan while delivering the same product to the same address. The 60-day plan is 34% lower than the 30-day plan. These are not small differences. In our model, subscription cadence is the single largest lever in the system.

The surprise: shipping matters the most

Here is the stage-by-stage breakdown for the 30-day plan:

Nearly two-thirds of the annual footprint came from parcel shipping. Ingredients came next. Packaging was a small share of the total.

In practical terms, the choice between shipping once a month and once a quarter matters far more than the choice between a pouch and a glass bottle. That is the central lesson from this exercise.

It also reinforces the logic of the system we have already built: a reusable bottle up front, lighter refill shipments after that, and plan options that let people receive Winnow less often when they prefer.

What we can change

The LCA clarified our priorities.

1. Lower-carbon probiotic production. The largest ingredient-side contributor in the model is the freeze-dried probiotic biomass. That means supplier energy mix matters. A supplier operating on lower-carbon electricity could materially reduce the footprint of the product itself.
2. Packaging discipline, not packaging obsession. We still care about packaging: reusability, material choice, and compostability matter. But from a carbon perspective, this analysis suggests that endless optimization of secondary packaging is not the highest-value lever available to us.
3. Cleaner parcel delivery over time. Our largest emissions source sits partly outside our direct control: the parcel network. As last-mile delivery electrifies and routing improves, the footprint of each shipment should fall. That is a meaningful system-wide lever, and one we will continue to track.

What you can change

The biggest decision, by a wide margin, is your subscription cadence.

Moving from a 30-day plan to a 90-day plan cuts the modeled footprint nearly in half, with no change to the product itself. Same capsules. Same bottle on the counter. Fewer shipments.

That is also true at the household level. If two people receiving monthly shipments at the same address both move to quarterly refills, the parcel count drops sharply.

We did not design the 90-day plan as a sustainability feature first. We designed it because many customers wanted less friction, fewer boxes, and fewer refill decisions. But it turns out to be the strongest sustainability lever we currently offer.

What 9.31 kg CO₂e per year actually means

Numbers like these are hard to feel without context.

For perspective, the annual footprint of Winnow in our model is small in absolute terms. On the 30-day plan it comes out to 9.31 kg CO₂e per year. On the 90-day plan it comes out to 5.05 kg CO₂e per year.

Carbon is invisible, so here is a more tangible way to think about it: in EPA terms, 9.31 kg CO₂e is roughly equal to burning about 1 gallon of gasoline. The 90-day plan, at 5.05 kg CO₂e per year, is a little over half a gallon.

That does not make the footprint zero. But it does make the tradeoff easier to understand. For Winnow, the climate story is not mainly about the bottle or the pouch. It is about how many times a package makes the trip to your door. Fewer shipments, in this case, is the clearest way to reduce the footprint.