Product Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Carbon Footprint Analysis

CleanMetrics can bring precision to your sustainability efforts by estimating the life-cycle carbon footprints and resource uses of your products or services. Carbon footprints are becoming an important way of evaluating the environmental burden of a product or service. Consumers and businesses can use carbon footprint figures in their decision-making process as they choose from a large selection of products and services. For product manufacturers and service providers, carbon footprints are an essential performance metric that can and should be continually improved. Request quote

What is a Product Carbon Footprint?

The carbon footprint of a product or service is the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted over the life cycle of that product or service, expressed as kilograms of CO2 equivalents. The carbon footprint figure captures the mix of energy sources used in producing, delivering and using a product/service, as well as non-energy related GHG emissions. Over time, the carbon footprint also captures energy efficiencies achieved in the product life cycle as well as any transition to renewable energy sources and materials/processes with lighter footprints.

Our Solutions

We offer three levels of product LCA and carbon footprint solutions, designed to minimize the time, effort and cost involved in getting high-quality LCAs done. All of our solutions use our life cycle assessment (LCA) software tools and a standards-based methodology, and evaluate three life-cycle impact metrics: carbon (GHG emissions), energy and water.

 

1. Template-based product LCA

 

Template-based LCAs are based on our Rapid Carbon Footprinting (RCF) methodology, which provides for a streamlined and highly automated data flow. Customers enter their product data into our standard data template. We then run the data through the RCF flow and deliver results to customers after an internal technical review. This approach is quick, easy and very affordable. It is appropriate for full life-cycle assessments of products in any industry sector as long as our extensive life-cycle inventory database has data for the key materials and ingredients used to make the product.

 

 

2. Template-based farmgate LCA

 

We offer template-based LCAs for agricultural products from cradle to farmgate using the farm-level modeling capabilities in FoodCarbonScope. Customers provide data on farm inputs and farm operations using our standard data template. In addition, when farm-level data is difficult to obtain, our predictive LCA methodology can take production data for food and agricultural products from one region (much of this can come from existing data in our own database) and run LCAs for a different region by changing the climate/moisture/soil parameters and electricity grids. We can also change production methods in our predictive LCAs, such as converting conventional farming to organic, by appropriately modifying the inputs and land management practices. Farmgate LCA results can be imported into product LCAs as material inflows for full life-cycle assessments.

 

3. Custom LCA

 

We also offer custom LCAs for more complex or non-standard product scenarios that do not fit into either of our template-based offerings.

 

 

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More On Our Solutions

Our solutions take into account a number of critical factors in the life cycles of products and services:

  • Production and transport of raw materials, components, ingredients and other supplies

  • Production of the final product, including:

    • Allocation and avoided impacts from multiple outputs
    • Locational specificity of production operations
  • Any additional processing and packaging of the product
  • Transportation of the product through a distribution network, consisting of various transport modes and storage locations
  • Temperature control in transport and storage
  • Delivery of the product or service to consumer
  • Use of the product or service
  • End-of-life disposal of the product
  • Solid waste and waste water generated throughout the life cycle
  • Land use impacts
  • Carbon storage and sequestration in products and components
  • Time-dependent GHG emissions and carbon sequestration throughout the life cycle

The analysis is guided by applicable international standards (including the ISO 14040/14044 series, PAS 2050, and GHG Protocol Product Standard) for the life-cycle environmental assessment of products and services. Our analysis is supported by our large database of life cycle inventory (LCI) data for raw materials used in manufacturing/construction/packaging, common industrial processes, agricultural processes and food products, energy sources, transport modes, etc., compiled from highly credible data sources and research literature and processed by our in-house tools according to rigorous LCA standards.

In addition to providing total environmental footprint figures, our detailed reports will help you to focus on "hotspots" of carbon emissions, energy use and water use for your products and services. The analysis is useful not only for communicating the footprint figures to customers through eco-labels and other means, but also serves as a tool for measuring and directing continual product and process improvements.

Integrated Application Areas

We offer integrated end-to-end solutions in a number of industry sectors with our specialized tools, data and expert consulting services:

Foods and beverages
Packaging materials
Building construction and operation
Bedding and furniture
Clothing and apparel
Transportation, product distribution and logistics