Product Footprinting and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
Product Footprinting is the process of calculating the environmental impact of a specific product throughout its life cycle — from the extraction of raw materials to manufacturing, transport, use, and end-of-life. It provides a quantified view of a product’s environmental footprint, typically expressed as CO₂e emissions (carbon footprint), but it can also include other impact categories such as water use, energy demand, and waste generation.
How Product Footprinting Works in Our Tool
Our tool simplifies Product Footprinting by combining product-level business data with scientifically validated impact data.
Here’s how it works step-by-step:
Start with product amounts – We use the quantities of products purchased and sold as the foundation of the calculation.
Add product details – Each product needs to be enriched with data such as:
Bill of Materials (BoM) – to understand what materials and components go into each product.
Supplier origin – to determine transport-related impacts and supply chain distances.
Production utilities – such as electricity, heating, and water use during manufacturing.
Match to impact data – All materials, energy, and transport inputs are linked to recognized life cycle inventory (LCI) databases, ensuring the results are consistent with international LCA standards (e.g., ISO 14040/44, EF, or GHG Protocol Product Standard).
The result is a comprehensive and transparent Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) — a key step toward sustainability reporting, eco-design, and environmental labeling.
How Product Footprinting Relates to a Full LCA Study
While a full Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) explores every environmental impact across multiple categories and life cycle stages, Product Footprinting focuses specifically on the most material aspects of your product’s carbon impact.
Think of it as a streamlined, data-driven LCA — designed for scalability and automation across multiple products.
A full LCA might require months of manual work and consulting; our approach leverages your existing business data to make it faster, repeatable, and integrated into your operations.
From Product Footprints to Corporate Footprints
Once your Product Footprints are established, expanding to a Corporate Footprint becomes straightforward.
Your organization’s total emissions are made up of:
Scope 1: Direct emissions from owned or controlled sources (e.g., company vehicles, onsite fuel combustion).
Scope 2: Indirect emissions from purchased electricity, heating, and refrigerants.
Scope 3: Indirect emissions from your value chain — including purchased goods and services, business travel, commuting, and waste.
Our tool allows you to extend your product-level data to cover all relevant organizational activities by adding additional data on such as:
Electricity and heating consumption
Goods and services purchases
Employee commuting and business travel
Waste and water management
By combining these data sources, your company can generate a complete Corporate Footprint, aligned with the GHG Protocol and suitable for sustainability reporting frameworks such as CSRD and CDP.
🚀 Summary
Level | Description | Data Sources | Standards |
Product Footprint | Impact per product, focusing on materials, utilities, and transport | Product data, supplier info, BoM, energy use | ISO 14067, GHG Protocol Product Standard |
Corporate Footprint | Total organizational emissions (Scopes 1–3) | Facility energy use, procurement, travel, commuting | GHG Protocol Corporate Standard, CSRD |