The Environmental Cost Indicator (ECI) is Root's primary environmental impact metric. It expresses the total environmental footprint of a product or company as a monetary value in euros — representing the estimated cost that society would need to pay to repair or compensate for the environmental damage caused.
You can think of it this way: if Planet Earth had an invoice, the ECI is the amount your product would be charged.
Why use a monetary metric?
Expressing environmental impact in euros makes it easier to:
Compare across impact categories — carbon, water, land use, and toxicity are all expressed on the same scale
Communicate to non-technical stakeholders — a financial metric is more intuitive to business leaders than a mix of kg CO2e, m³ water, and land area
Integrate into business decisions — environmental costs can be weighed directly against financial costs
Prioritise improvements — identify which products, materials or processes carry the highest environmental cost
What impact categories does the ECI include?
The ECI aggregates multiple environmental impact categories, each with a different monetisation factor:
Impact category | What it measures |
Climate change | Greenhouse gas emissions (CO2e) |
Particulate matter | Fine particle emissions affecting human health |
Water scarcity | Freshwater consumption relative to local scarcity |
Land use | Impact on ecosystems from land occupation |
Resource use (fossils) | Depletion of fossil fuel resources |
Ionising radiation | Radioactive emissions affecting human health |
Others | Additional environmental categories from ecoinvent |
Each category is weighted and converted to euros using monetisation factors derived from environmental economics research.
Where can I see the ECI in Root?
The ECI appears throughout Root's impact dashboards:
Company impact dashboard — total ECI for your company across all products and facilities
Product impact dashboard — ECI per product, with breakdown by life cycle phase
Product drawer — detailed ECI breakdown for a single product by material, transport, and production
Material impact dashboard — which materials carry the highest environmental cost
FAQ
How is the ECI different from carbon footprint?
Carbon footprint (CO2e) only measures greenhouse gas emissions. The ECI covers a much wider set of environmental impacts. A product could have a low carbon footprint but a high ECI if, for example, it uses water-intensive materials in water-scarce regions.
Can I switch between ECI and CO2e in Root?
Yes. Most dashboards in Root allow you to toggle between the ECI (environmental footprint) view and the carbon footprint (CO2e) view, so you can report on whichever metric is most relevant for your needs.