Social and political pressure has made emissions an increasingly important subject for companies. The extension of the sustainability reporting mandate by the EU has increased the necessity for carbon transparency for companies in Europe. Warehousing and distribution account for 13\% global supply chain emissions and can be an important factor in reducing company emissions. The traditional trade off in warehousing storage systems between cost, service level and emissions has mostly been in favor of cost and service level. Now however, emissions are becoming just as important to companies. This paper investigates the emission levels of manual and automated storage system, specified to aviation standard parts. Aviation standard parts are chosen as these are commonly stored using automated systems, due to the high degree of accuracy needed and the quantities involved in this sector. Current knowledge does not provide insight into the environmental footprint of automated and manual storage systems for small parts. This paper aims to fill this gap by combining literature research and expert consulting to gain insight into the carbon footprint of storage systems and modelling to gain insight into operational energy consumption. Finally, a case study is performed at an aviation parts dealer for empirical evidence on storage system emissions.