SAN BRUNO, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 06/16/09 -- Planet Metrics today announced the beta release of its Rapid Carbon Modeling (RCM(TM)) Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution. RCM enables manufacturers, consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies and retailers to model, analyze and optimize carbon emissions and energy use throughout the entire value chain, from material extraction to end-of-life, often called cradle-to-grave. RCM provides the optimization tools to efficiently assess exposure surrounding energy and carbon cost scenarios and to model alternatives to ultimately save money and emit less harmful gasses. RCM enables companies to identify and focus on the highest ROI eco-innovations to drive competitive advantage.

As the need to lower total cost of operations continues to increase, leading analysts are reporting that sustainability and corporate social responsibility mandates are emerging as cost control and customer retention strategies.

"Planet Metrics' RCM software provides us with the necessary tools to measure and track the carbon impact associated with product design and sourcing," said Adam Lowry, Method co-founder and chief greenskeeper. "By better understanding volatile energy and resource prices, we can make better decisions to lessen our overall footprint and save money. As a leading Cradle-to-Cradle business, we are always seeking innovative ways to make progress in this area. Planet Metrics has been a great resource to Method."

RCM's business intelligence and visualizations make it easy, quick, and cost effective for people responsible for managing the supply chain and ensuring sustainability within complex organizations to map a company's entire supply chain in terms of carbon intensity throughout product lifecycle stages. It provides an analytical and visual model of the relative carbon in the supply chain coming from raw materials, packaging, logistics, and manufacturing processes. The SaaS solution enables product management, supply chain, operations, and sustainability executives to create views and perspectives that reflect commodity price risk, substitution potential, carbon cost risk, dematerialization possibilities, what-if scenarios, as well as before and after analytics. Planet Metrics solutions are typically deployed in under 30 days, and integrate enterprise business applications data and all existing LCA and GHG Inventory data.

"In light of heightened public awareness around environmental responsibility, coupled with the White House administrations' plans for carbon regulations and constant, intense focus on the corporate bottom line, companies must develop and deploy comprehensive sustainability strategies," said Andy Leventhal, founder and CEO of Planet Metrics. "A lower carbon footprint leads to lower cost, and as more organizations recognize that deeper understanding of the materials they use helps drive better decisions on sourcing, transportation and distribution, they will create sustainable best practices and greatly improve the bottom line."

With RCM, manufacturing, consumer packaged goods and retail corporations are able to determine the financial and carbon impacts of their products including the ability to:

• Explore baseline carbon and energy footprint and run footprint scenarios across entire business
  
• Identify exposure to energy cost throughout the supply chain
  
• Analyze margin impacts using future price of carbon and commodities throughout supply chain
  
• Incorporate quantifiable eco-efficiency metrics into sustainability strategy
  
• Identify strategic risks and opportunities associated with carbon and energy throughout enterprise
  
• Run material and vendor substitution scenarios in support of low carbon product design initiatives
  
• Analyze products, parts/ingredients and packaging with highest exposure to embodied energy and carbon
  
• Review an initial analysis in days or weeks (not months), shortening project cycle
  
• Collaborate on scenario creation and findings throughout the organization through online data input into RCM secure SaaS modeling system

Managing a complex supply chain and working with multiple suppliers and transportation providers, Method needed insight into the carbon emissions occurring throughout its business. In a matter of weeks, Planet Metrics organized the company's primary data, including bill of materials, product formulations, transportation and supply chain logistics data and combined it with Planet Metrics' world class carbon data warehouse of scientific, peer-reviewed data to get a complete and comprehensive understanding of the whole value chain --ultimately measuring emissions from cradle-to-gate.

By organizing the full data set into libraries, providing scientific analysis, identifying and visually presenting the carbon intense hot spots, Planet Metrics' RCM software provides a unique breakdown of the whole carbon footprint across many product lines, allowing Method to drill down on the biggest carbon emissions categories to begin making significant changes. Often times, multiple short- and long-term decisions will emerge that dramatically reduce emissions, and ultimately save the company money. Using this information, Method can implement product formulation changes across their product lines, create innovative packaging, and communicate performance improvements to internal and external stakeholders.

The data libraries consist of primary data collected from Method and its suppliers, as well as secondary data from external and Planet Metrics' extensive carbon and energy database. These libraries are used to power carbon and energy models of Method's products to:

• Rapidly develop cradle-to-gate carbon and energy footprint baselines for product lines;
  
• Identify the most carbon and energy-intensive materials, processes and life cycle stages;
  
• Quickly compare carbon impact, energy demand, and the cost of different embodied energy types across product life cycle stages and product lines;
  
• Quantify carbon, energy, and potential energy cost tradeoffs associated with various scenarios, including material substitutions for cleaning products and packaging systems, supplier switching, and logistics changes;
  
• Assess the risk associated with fluctuating energy prices and the costs of future carbon regulation throughout the supply chain; and,
  
• Develop key performance indicators to measure and track the impact of future product changes.

Planet Metrics is a carbon information management (CIM) software company that provides streamlined modeling, analytics and complex data visualization for corporate sustainability strategists and product innovation teams. Planet Metrics' goal is to guide customers in their corporate decision making to achieve sustainability goals and improve financial performance. Working with major brands in automotive, consumer packaged goods, and food, Planet Metrics provides Rapid Carbon Modeling (RCM) technology which offers organizations software to model, visualize, and manage carbon reduction efforts throughout the company's operations. Integrated analytics and visualizations make it easy to identify hot spots of carbon intensity in packaging, supply chain, transportation, logistics, and disposal. Planet Metrics solutions are typically deployed in under 30 days, and integrate existing Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) data, GHG Inventories, and other enterprise business application data.

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