From Carbon Footprint to Environmental Footprint: One solution for both

Life Cycle Assessment: the backbone of Product Carbon and Environmental Footprint

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), following ISO 14040/44, assesses a product’s environmental impact from production to disposal. LCA provides a holistic view, evaluating at least 15 impact categories beyond carbon emissions. This method reveals that products affect the environment in many ways, prompting the need for diverse reporting formats like the Carbon Footprint (PCF) and Product Environmental Footprint (PEF).

Carbon Footprint: a double-edged sword

Using ISO 14067, businesses can report CO2 emissions over a product’s lifecycle. For product companies, about 80% of emissions stem from the product itself. Yes, your product is guilty!  But carbon is just part of the story. Environmental impacts on water, land, and human life are crucial too. Recognizing these effects helps businesses adopt comprehensive sustainability measures across their product life cycles.

Going beyond carbon: one solution for everything

In today’s regulatory landscape, understanding the environmental footprint of a product isn’t just a compliance task—it’s a strategic asset. Regulations like ESPR promote eco-friendly designs that use less energy, are recyclable, and have low carbon and environmental footprints. While carbon is often the primary focus, the impact extends to over 15 other categories beyond just carbon.

Right now people just want to imagine estimating the carbon footprint  effortlessly. LCA-based software provides insights for various environmental reports. This integrated approach simplifies the process, enabling businesses to generate diverse outputs for multiple stakeholders without acquiring multiple products to do so.

A unified platform enables you to seamlessly evolve from calculating specific emissions like carbon to calculating a product’s complete environmental footprint. This helps identify and address environmental hotspots quickly, leading to more effective sustainability measures.

Using an LCA-based solution, businesses can adapt swiftly to regulatory changes and customer demands, saving time and resources. This ensures compliance with current standards and boosts credibility in environmental claims by providing data transparency.

Understanding the difference between Environmental and Carbon Footprinting

In order to accurately assess the environmental impact of the product, whether through carbon footprinting or environmental footprinting, it is essential to adhere to the LCA methodology. This standardized approach ensures a comprehensive evaluation of the product’s lifecycle, from raw material extraction to end-of-life disposal, capturing all the relevant environmental impacts.

• Beyond carbon emissions
  Environmental footprinting is more than just a measurement tool; it represents a strategic approach to environmental management. Covering a wide spectrum of environmental issues, it offers insights that extend beyond the conventional boundaries of carbon footprint analysis. This comprehensive view ensures that environmental footprinting captures a broad range of environmental impacts, making it a more inclusive and informative approach to understanding a product’s environmental footprint. Additionally, it identifies alternatives to reduce carbon and other environmental impacts. While it’s straightforward to begin with carbon footprinting, it is essential to seek solutions that extend further.

• Environmental footprinting for ecodesign
  Furthermore, environmental footprinting doesn’t stop at providing comparative data alone. Performing environmental footprinting can inform ecodesign strategies, enabling companies to adapt and redefine their products. By experimenting with various parameters, you can directly observe the positive or negative environmental impact of your product.

• The clarity of Environmental Footprint over Carbon Footprint
  The carbon footprint, while foundational, is beginning to show its limitations, particularly when it comes to meeting the evolving inquiries from stakeholders who now demand more than just a snapshot of annual emissions. Environmental footprinting emerges as a robust, future-proof method that not only satisfies but exceeds these stakeholder expectations by offering a transparent and qualitative narrative of a product’s environmental journey. It allows businesses to not just report on, but actively manage and communicate the continuous evolution of their product portfolio.

Making the choice

Choosing between carbon and environmental footprints depends on your business needs. An integrated LCA-based approach offers the ability to focus on carbon and/or go beyond helping you meet regulatory requirements and achieve sustainability goals now and in the future.

For companies assembling products from components that want to analyze and share their impact (e.g., consumer goods/electronics, apparel, packaging), try Ecochain Mobius.

For companies processing materials into a diverse portfolio of products across multiple factories that want to provide full reporting (e.g., construction materials, food processing) use Ecochain Helix.

Step into a future where sustainable management is not only possible but simple for everyone. With our solutions, you’re not just adopting software; you’re embracing a journey towards a more sustainable business model.