Starting a product footprinting project doesn’t have to be complex or overwhelming. The key is knowing where to focus and what actually drives progress.
In this episode of Behind the Product Impact, we show you how to confidently get started, even when requirements are unclear, data is incomplete, or timelines feel tight. Instead of waiting for perfect conditions, you’ll learn how to move forward with clarity and make decisions that keep your project on track.
We break down the key dependencies that shape your timeline – from data availability to output requirements – and show you how to work with them, not against them. Because calculating environmental impact of your products isn’t about getting everything right from the start. It’s about building momentum and scaling your impact over time.
Video Transcript:
Artjom: That’s one way I like to look at LCA in general is that it’s an iterative process. It’s like when making a painting. The first sketch you make is not the final end result. Over time, it becomes the final piece.
Managing product. Sustainability isn’t easy. Regulations keep shifting. Expectations are changing, and the playbook isn’t always clear behind the product. Impact is our series for exactly that reality. Your front row seats to the questions best practices and operational decisions Sustainability teams face every day to understand, communicate, and improve their product’s impacts.
Emma: Hi, I’m Emma
Artjom: And I’m Artjom.
Emma: And we are back today for another episode of Behind the Product Impact, and today we’re talking about what it takes to run a product footprinting initiative at your company. And this is an important topic to talk about because a lot of the time what we see when people are coming to us, they got their first environmental footprints data requests.
And this can be for many different reasons, right? So it can be because people need internal insights. It can also be because the companies need to participate in tenders or because their competitors are now doing this and they need it to. Lots of different reasons.
But one thing that we see that they have in common is when companies are doing this for the first time, they don’t really know where to start. They have kind of a tight deadline that is probably not realistic, and they also don’t really know what data to collect or what deliverable . And it’s kind of difficult to start. And this can also cause a lot of stress. Which is why today we are talking about what do you need to think about, to do these projects and to be more successful. So, Artjom, you’ve worked a lot with our customers, so what would be your first advice to people starting to do these kind of projects?
Artjom: I think to start off, it’s really important to nail down the fundamental question. Why does your company need it?
And you’ve mentioned, I think a few already, really good examples. Are you doing it because the company wants to become more sustainable and reduce their impact, and they’re applying for B Corp and you need a number. Are you doing it because a customer or your whole customer base is demanding and requesting these numbers?
These are different use cases, and each one will have its own specifics that you need to keep in mind. Maybe you have multiple use cases, that’s also an option. But it’s important to get that straight because if things change over time, you should always come back to: Does it still answer or address my initial goal?
Emma: Okay, so great that you mentioned that the goal is indeed super important. We actually have another episode about determining your goal and the output that you need to fulfill that goal. Because it can be actually quite challenging, to do that. And if you’re figuring this out as your project goes, you’re gonna also lose time there. So really important to set that before. Now that we’ve cleared that up.
Let’s talk a little bit more about the timeline and factors that influence the timeline of your project. So what would be the most important factor if I ask you?
Artjom: There are a couple. So related to the business goal, there is output. And what formats do you need your results in? There’s another one which we’ll dive into in a sec, is the inputs and the data. We have stakeholder management, as one of the factors that will influence your timeline. Then external dependencies as a final one. To touch upon, the first one on the output, people might think output and business goal, isn’t that kind of the same?
They’re definitely related. The business goal is the foundation and the driver, the motivator. And the output is the thing you present to your stakeholder or to the person requesting it. An output can be just a number, can be a report, can be a verified report, a DPP. All of these are forms of outputs. And they will determine, to some extent, how long it’ll take to get to that end result.
To get to the number you need to do just the modeling in quotation marks, but to get to a verified report, you’ll need to write a report, about your model. You’ll need to get in touch with a verifier. So there you go. You have a dependency and you need to also have someone give you a signature. So these are all factors that will influence how long it’ll take to get to your output. And talking about outputs, the opposite are the inputs.
Emma: Which are needs also very important. We’ve already talked about this in a previous video about the data foundation. So setting up your data collection process before you actually start doing it can save you a lot of time.
Because what we see a lot of the time in practice is that people start collecting this data without really a clear plan. They’re not entirely even sure what they need. And then they need to figure it out as they go. And that costs them a lot of time. because things are not complete and you don’t know where to find them. So it really helps set up this data foundation. So if you wanna know more about that, please watch this previous episode.
And so related to the data foundation, another thing that’s really important is stakeholder management. And this is because these type of projects are not a project that you do on your own. They’re a project that you do, hopefully with a lot of people. Because it’s about the whole product and the whole life cycle of the product. So it will take other people that know about certain parts of these life cycles, to answer certain question or to find certain data.
So it’s really important to have a stakeholder list to know, who do I ask what questions? How can they help me, and how can we work together to make this a success? That will really influence your timeline for the better. And then you already kind of touched upon it, but there’s also a lot of external dependencies that you can’t control, right?
Artjom: A bridge to the dependencies is also to get to know your company. How big is your company? Who is responsible for what? Does your company have 20 different factories? If that’s the case, is there one central place where data is stored? Typically from our experience not, and which means you’ll have to indeed reach out to each factory or the one that is most relevant to your project.
Go back to the business goal. Why are you doing it? Other external factors can be, regulatory, although regulatory changes typically are slow in their development. Something like A PCR, which are the product category rules, which will determine how you have to model certain parts of your product.
These can be updated frequently, sometimes multiple times a year if you’re unlucky. But luckily a lot of the program operators that publish these PCRs will transparently say on their website: Hey, this one is being currently revised. We’re expecting new publication by this and this time. Have a look because these are quite important.
And if you’re starting now and next month or in two months, they revise the rules. You might have to redo it, start from scratch, in terms of the modeling. Another one that is important is how are you going to go about doing your entire project? Are you aiming to do everything in house?
Are you gonna involve an external consultant? They have pros and cons. You’re either fully in control as an independent or in-house with a consultant. They might be more knowledgeable, but they might have their own timelines or capacity issues. But you need to make sure that the communication between all these different stakeholders is right to ensure that you’re able to get to that final end result. The last thing that I wanted to say is about see your project in phases. Related to the business goal, what is the final deadline where your management expects a result?
And then do some form of backward engineering or reverse figuring out, okay, that’s by when I need the results. How and when do I need to do the different milestones to get to that end result? And if you already see issues and contingencies, make sure to communicate about those with the relevant people.
Emma: And definitely also build in some slack, right? Because I think, this is going to sound very cheesy, but expect the unexpected. Because you’ve just also addressed some things that you can control. But there will also be things that you can’t check upfront and that you just won’t know.
Artjom: People don’t give or deliver their data, as promised on time.
Emma: Or even data usually contains mistakes.
And these mistakes don’t necessarily impact the daily operation of the company. So they’re taken for granted, or not even noticed. But usually, for example, with the Bill of Materials, most customers, when we start a project, we check the data, and then there is issues in that data. It just usually happens. And that’s also why a customer of ours, for example, he came to talk in our office a while ago and he was like: So actually, you know, people are always talking about automation and having APIs or having AI to do the model for them.
But he was like, actually that wouldn’t help us as a company. Because I actually found these mistakes now, and I know that if we would’ve automated, it would not have made our project faster. Because we first need to find the mistakes and really check the data and fix those mistakes before automation makes sense.
Artjom: Automation only works if the data is right. But the data is always in development. Things change over time because your product changes or your purchasing changes. And automation will not solve the data quality part.
Emma: No, I still have to see my first project with perfect data. With that being said, if we now go from these factors are influencing the timeline more to a concrete example of what a project looks like and what a potential timeline could be. So let’s maybe walk through the phases of a project.
So usually how that goes is of course, first a customer or a prospect actually needs to decide on how are we going to solve our product footprinting problem. How are we gonna get to our business goal? So they purchase, for example, software. That’s of course what we do. We have software with expert services. So let’s say that they did that, and then we start our projects. So then we have a kickoff.
So most of our customers, when they’re doing it for the first time, they don’t know exactly what data to collect, what to include, what to exclude. We also say, this is gonna be the timeline for this project. This is what we can expect. And then we get to the data collection.
Artjom: Yes. So after the kickoff, we typically start collecting the data, now collecting data. I refer to collecting data for the project that we’re working on.
Hopefully some data is already in the systems. But we clarify the key data we need. What I know from experience is that this can take a couple of weeks. What often we do in projects is we actually work in these iterations. So when a first batch of data comes in, we can already kind of start modeling while collecting the kind of other data that is also important, but not fundamental to getting started with the modeling phase.
So the data collection can happen already during the kickoff phase and going into the next modeling phase. That also is a nice way to cut in or plan in some slack in your project. Is to have some overlap between the different phases, because that’s one way I like to look at LCA in general is that it’s an iterative process. It’s like when making a painting. The first sketch you make is not the final end result. Over time, it becomes the final piece.
Emma: And then once the data is collected or it needs, once certain parts of the data are collected, you can start building a model.
It can be that a customer builds this model themselves with software. It’s also an option to get trained and do it yourself that way. We can also do it for you. There’s a lot of different options.
And so this phase will look different, for each of those options. But one important thing is that the model gets built and that the data gets checked and that all the things that we need to do to ensure that the model is good, quality are done. And then we get to the reporting phase.
Artjom: So starting with the reporting phase. One of, I think, the key elements or aspects of reporting actually starts before the reporting phase and is an ongoing thing throughout the whole project. Which is documentation. And noting down assumptions. Any potential changes. Why? Well, a project can last sometimes a few months. And towards the end when you’re writing that report, you may not remember everything that happened at the start of the project. If you document and write things down throughout the process, your future self will thank you for it. Because that report will be so much easier to write.
You avoid having that issue, for instance, where you have a panic: Why did I do this thing? Why did I select this dataset and not something else? And that can create delays. So I think having a working, living document, which in itself can be used as a foundation, as a starting point to write the report is, a really important one. And the report itself, if we dive into that, is a kind of a mix of two things. It’s the qualitative descriptions of your product. Combined with the quantitative results, the outputs of the model. And that, as a whole, represents then your product, both in terms of what it is and environmentally how it performs. That’s the thing that you can then either share with your customers or whoever it is that is requesting this report. Or you can go on and verify this thing.
Emma: So verification usually goes something like this. So we have this report, we hand it in with a verifier. Then we go back and forth about two to three times, depends on the situation. That we go back and forth does not mean that the report wasn’t good to begin with. But in general you just have to check a lot of things and you’re also carrying this over to another person that needs to understand the full thing. So it’s just a natural process of getting to an agreement.
Artjom: What we see customers do is they tend to reach out to a verifier quite early on in the project because for two main reasons. One is figure out and find that verifier that has experience with your product that knows what they’re doing. Two, figure out whether this verifier even has capacity and time to do your verification.
Because if you go to the verifier on the day where you need the verification. The odds are they’re not gonna be able to do it for you, because the demand is increasing. But the verifiers are quite limited in how many there are. And especially in your specific industry or product.
Emma: Very good addition. And so if we look concretely at the timeline and what a realistic timeline could be, we’ve seen timelines between maybe weeks or maybe months. It can differ really with what is the output you need. And also with all of those other elements that we just said that, those are things you can expect.
Artjom: We’ve talked about a lot of the process, external factors. One that we haven’t mentioned and is tough to influence, but ultimately is also a question of you as the leader of the project. Is this a side project or your main project? Do you have two hours a week, or do you have your full week to do this?
And also your background and your experience. If it’s the first time, realistically, it will take longer than if you have done the modeling or reporting already before. And over time as you’ve done it , the whole process from start to end yourself. Next time it’s gonna go much faster.
Emma: And I think that’s also an important point that brings us to: What does success actually look like? So I think the first time doesn’t necessarily need to be perfect. Of course you want a good result. But actually I think personally that the goal of doing such a project for the first time should also be that you understand how to do it next time. To learn. Yes exactly. It should be mainly to learn, because I think that sometimes companies are like, okay, we have this request now we’re gonna do this once. But you’re going to do this many more times. This is coming and we also see this with our customers. It’s usually not a one off.
Artjom: The regulation is here to stay.
Emma: Exactly. And even people that want it to be a one off, we’ll come back. So I think the first time it’s also good to have a goal of: Okay, I’m gonna learn everything there is about my product now. I’m gonna learn where the data is and I’m gonna learn about what the issues are in this data. And then next time you can do it so much faster and better. So that’s also why, of course you can go for like this shortcut solution of doing it powered with AI, for example. Or just try to do it as fast as possible and not really go into too much of the details. But in the end, you also want to learn for the future and set yourself up for future success. description for our websiteI think, that brings us to the end of this episode.
So we’ve talked today about what it takes to run a product footprint initiative at your company. We’ve talked about timelines. We’ve talked about that you need to know your business goal and all the different reasons that timelines can differ. If you wanna know more about this topic, we’ll also have a blog post up on our website, so you can check that out. And of course, also stay tuned for any next episodes that we’ll have. And if you have questions about anything related to product footprint, LCA, EPDs, PCFs, you name it. Please just, reach out to us, send us a message, and we’ll try to answer all your questions.
Thank you Artjom.
Artjom: Yeah, thanks Emma for having me. Thanks for watching and we hope to see you soon.
