Sustainability and ESG reporting

Enterprise procurement and ESG teams increasingly ask vendors for the carbon footprint of the services they consume. The Sustainability page, under Insights → Sustainability, estimates the CO2 equivalent (CO2e) of your outbound communications per channel for a selected window, and exports the same figures as a CSV you can attach to an ESG report or procurement questionnaire. Two API endpoints back the page, so the same report can feed an automated pipeline:

GET /analytics/carbon — per-channel CO2e estimate as JSON, for the selected window.
GET /analytics/carbon/export — the same report rendered as a downloadable CSV, with the period and methodology stamped into the file header.

What the dashboard estimates

The report converts the usage Orbit already records for your account — outbound message sends and outbound voice minutes — into an per-channel emissions estimate. Only outbound traffic is counted: the footprint the platform causes on your behalf. Inbound replies are excluded. Each request returns, for the resolved window:

A period.start and period.end describing exactly which range the figures cover.
One line per channel used in the window (SMS, WhatsApp, RCS, email, voice, and so on), with its unit basis, quantity, applied factor, and resulting grams/kilograms CO2e.
Account-wide totals: total messages, total voice minutes, and total CO2e in grams and kilograms.

curl "https://api.orbit.devotel.io/api/v1/analytics/carbon?days=30" \
  -H "X-API-Key: $ORBIT_API_KEY"

Response — 200 OK

{
  "data": {
    "period": { "start": "2026-07-25T00:00:00.000Z", "end": "2026-08-24T00:00:00.000Z" },
    "factors_version": "2026-06-orbit-v1",
    "disclaimer": "Estimated CO2e figures for indicative ESG reporting. Derived from published per-message and per-minute emission factors applied to your outbound usage; not a certified carbon audit. Factor table and version are included so the estimates can be independently reproduced.",
    "channels": [
      {
        "channel": "sms",
        "basis": "segment",
        "units": 410000,
        "messages": 390000,
        "factor_g_co2e_per_unit": 0.014,
        "source": "Berners-Lee, How Bad Are Bananas? (~0.014 g CO2e / SMS segment)",
        "co2e_grams": 5740,
        "co2e_kg": 5.74
      },
      {
        "channel": "whatsapp",
        "basis": "message",
        "units": 85000,
        "messages": 85000,
        "factor_g_co2e_per_unit": 0.02,
        "source": "OTT/IP message estimate (data-bearing payload over IP)",
        "co2e_grams": 1700,
        "co2e_kg": 1.7
      },
      {
        "channel": "voice",
        "basis": "minute",
        "units": 1240,
        "messages": 310,
        "factor_g_co2e_per_unit": 0.3,
        "source": "VoIP transport estimate (~0.3 g CO2e / connected minute)",
        "co2e_grams": 372,
        "co2e_kg": 0.372
      }
    ],
    "totals": {
      "co2e_grams": 7812,
      "co2e_kg": 7.812,
      "total_messages": 475000,
      "total_voice_minutes": 1240
    }
  },
  "meta": { "request_id": "req_…", "timestamp": "2026-08-24T09:41:13.000Z" }
}

Channels with zero outbound volume in the window are omitted, so the breakdown only shows surfaces you actually used.

Methodology and data provenance

Figures are order-of-magnitude estimates, labelled as such everywhere they appear — this is not a certified carbon audit. The report applies published per-unit emission factors to your usage, and every line carries the factor it used plus its provenance, so your sustainability team can audit (or override) the coefficients:

SMS — ≈ 0.014 g CO2e per segment (Berners-Lee, How Bad Are Bananas?). Applied per segment, because a concatenated SMS is transmitted as N independent 160-character segments.
Short transactional email — ≈ 0.3 g CO2e per message (the same source’s short-email figure).
OTT / IP messaging (WhatsApp, RCS, Viber, Messenger, Telegram, push) — ≈ 0.02 g CO2e per message, reflecting the data-bearing payload carried over IP datacenter relay.
Voice — ≈ 0.3 g CO2e per connected minute, a conservative midpoint of published mobile-call transport ranges.

A channel not yet covered by the factor table still counts, at the generic IP-message factor, so a new channel is never silently dropped from the footprint. Every report stamps a factors_version, so an exported figure is reproducible against a known factor table and reconcilable later.

Reading the dashboard

Open Insights → Sustainability. The page is limited to owner, admin, developer, and billing roles, and shows:

Headline tiles — total CO2e in kilograms, the same estimate in grams, and the factor-set version used to produce the figures.
Emissions by channel — a table sorted by total CO2e with each channel’s quantity (messages or voice minutes), the per-unit factor applied, and the resulting total.

The date-range picker scopes the window: pick a preset (24h, 7d, 30d, 90d, 12m) or a custom start/end range — a single calendar day is a valid custom range. When the window has no outbound activity, the page shows an empty state instead of zero rows; if the report fails to load, use Retry to refetch it. While the tiles and table load, placeholder skeletons appear in their place.

Export for ESG / procurement

The Download CSV button on the page — or a direct API call — produces a self-describing CSV you can attach to a sustainability questionnaire or hand to procurement. The leading # comment lines carry the period, factor-set version, and estimation disclaimer, so the file stands on its own when an auditor opens it; spreadsheet importers ignore # lines when parsing data.

curl "https://api.orbit.devotel.io/api/v1/analytics/carbon/export?start_date=2026-01-01&end_date=2026-01-31" \
  -H "X-API-Key: $ORBIT_API_KEY" \
  -o carbon-report.csv

# Orbit CPaaS — estimated CO2e sustainability report
# Period: 2026-01-01 to 2026-01-31
# Methodology version: 2026-06-orbit-v1
# Estimated CO2e figures for indicative ESG reporting; not a certified carbon audit.
channel,basis,units,messages_or_calls,factor_g_co2e_per_unit,co2e_grams,co2e_kg
sms,segment,410000,390000,0.014,5740,5.74
whatsapp,message,85000,85000,0.02,1700,1.7
voice,minute,1240,310,0.3,372,0.372
TOTAL,,,475310,,7812,7.812

Window, bounds, and estimation caveats

Scope either endpoint with start_date / end_date (calendar dates or ISO datetimes), or a rolling ?days=N lookback — the same date-range contract as every other analytics surface. Omitted parameters default to a 30-day rolling window. A lookback cap rejects ranges beyond the maximum allowed lookback with a 422, and a start_date later than end_date fails validation with the same status. Keep the estimation caveats in view when you use the figures:

These are indicative estimates for ESG reporting, not a certified carbon audit. State the factor set and version alongside the figures in any external report.
Figures cover only the outbound communications footprint the platform causes on your behalf — they are not your organisation’s full Scope 3.
SMS is estimated per segment; where a provider does not report segmentation, the message count is used instead, so long multi-part sends from those providers may be undercounted. Long e-mail with attachments is classed as a short transactional email for the same reason — treat email-heavy accounts as estimates at the conservative end.

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Sustainability and ESG reporting

Sustainability and ESG reporting

What the dashboard estimates

Methodology and data provenance

Reading the dashboard

Export for ESG / procurement

Window, bounds, and estimation caveats

​Sustainability and ESG reporting

​What the dashboard estimates

​Methodology and data provenance

​Reading the dashboard

​Export for ESG / procurement

​Window, bounds, and estimation caveats

Sustainability and ESG reporting

What the dashboard estimates

Methodology and data provenance

Reading the dashboard

Export for ESG / procurement

Window, bounds, and estimation caveats