Background Methodology

This page documents the methodological basis of the LCAs conducted in Root and how the platform's implementation aligns with ISO 14040:2006 and ISO 14044:2006. It is intended for practitioners, reviewers, and auditors who need to understand how inventory data is collected, how impacts are calculated, and where methodological decisions can be verified in the platform.

Root conducts attributional Life Cycle Assessments at the product level, in accordance with ISO 14040:2006 and ISO 14044:2006. Each product in the inventory receives a full LCA covering up to seven life cycle phases: raw materials, packaging, production, inbound transport, outbound transport, usage, and end of life.

Background database: EcoInvent 3.11, cut-off system model. Additional databases available for matching: Agribalyse, Agri-footprint.

Impact assessment method: EF v3.1 (Environmental Footprint 3.1, European Commission). 16 impact categories; Climate change is reported as a total plus three mandatory sub-indicators (fossil; biogenic; land use and land use change), and the three USEtox-based toxicity categories (human toxicity cancer, human toxicity non-cancer, freshwater ecotoxicity) are each reported with organics and inorganics sub-indicators, for 25 reported results in total.

Reporting period: One calendar year, defined per company as a configurable start and end year. All inventory data is filtered to orders falling within the selected reporting year.

The functional unit is one unit of the product as purchased, identified by its product ID. All single-unit results (Single in the platform) are normalized to this functional unit. Total results (Total) represent the single-unit impact multiplied by the total quantity purchased during the reporting period.

The reference flow is the product's Bill of Materials — the set of material inputs and quantities required to produce one unit. Where a product has no BOM, an added mass can be declared manually to allow facility and transport impacts to be distributed to it.

ISO 14044 §4.2.3.2 requires that the functional unit be measurable and clearly defined. In Root, this is consistent and implicit across all products but is not formally declared as a per-study parameter. The practitioner should state it explicitly in any external report.

The system boundary is configurable at company level. Two configurations are possible:

Cradle-to-gate + Distribution: Raw materials, packaging, production, inbound transport, outbound transport.

Cradle-to-grave: The above, plus Usage and End of Life phases.

Usage and End of Life are company-level toggles. When disabled, those phases are excluded from all calculations and completeness tracking.

Excluded from the product LCA system boundary: capital goods at facilities (collected but not currently allocated to products), employee commute and business travel (corporate footprint only), infrastructure and factory construction.

ISO 14044 §4.2.3.3 requires that the system boundary be explicitly stated and that any omissions be justified. In Root, the boundary is defined by platform settings rather than a per-study declaration; the practitioner must document it explicitly in any external report.

Inventory data is collected through Root's Collecting module. All entry forms include a Documentation field for recording sources, assumptions, and supporting evidence files. Data can be entered manually or uploaded via a template. Suppliers can be given access to a published facility link to enter data directly without full platform access.

ISO 14044 §4.3.2 requires that data be collected for each unit process within the system boundary, with sources referenced and data quality noted for significant data.

For each material in the BOM, Root models one unit process — the upstream production of that material — using the impact reference confirmed in the Matching step.

Impact_material = ImpactFactor × purchased_quantity × BOM_quantity × conversion_factor

The conversion_factor resolves any unit mismatch between the BOM unit and the dataset reference unit. If no reference is confirmed or no conversion factor can be resolved, the material contributes zero. No default or fallback value is applied.

There are two types of packaging being modelled.

Product packaging — linked directly to the product:

Impact_product_packaging = ImpactFactor × purchased_quantity × PackagingMaterial_quantity × conversion_factor

Logistics packaging — entered at the facility level and allocated across products departing from that facility using the same mass-based share described in the Allocation section below:

Impact_logistics_packaging = ImpactFactor × material_amount × logistics_mass_share × purchased_quantity

Each utility contract has a start and end date. Where a contract spans multiple months, the total amount is distributed evenly across contract months (linear temporal distribution); only months falling within the reporting year are summed.

Two data input modes are available per utility source:

Consumables at facilities are matched to both a direct production reference and an EoL reference; both are included in the production phase:

Impact_consumable = (ImpactFactor_direct + ImpactFactor_eol) × amount × conversion_factor

Electricity and heat datasets are matched to geographically specific EcoInvent datasets based on the facility's registered address. This makes facility address accuracy methodologically significant for production impact results.

A facility typically handles multiple products at the same time — the same electricity contract, heat source, and refrigerant are consumed regardless of which specific product is being made or stored at any given moment. Because these inputs are shared, Root must decide how much of each facility's environmental burden to attribute to each product. This is the allocation problem.

ISO 14044 §4.3.4.2 requires that where allocation cannot be avoided, the basis should reflect the underlying physical relationships between products. Root uses mass as the allocation basis: the heavier a product, or the greater the quantity processed, the larger its share of the facility's impact.

product share at facility = product's mass at facility ÷ total mass of all products at facility

product's production impact = total facility impact × product share

A concrete example:

A factory processes two products in 2024:

If the facility's electricity has a total carbon footprint of 500 kg CO₂e, each product receives 250 kg CO₂e of production impact.

Shared facilities:

If a facility is shared with another company, the Percentage field on each utility contract records the company's ownership share of that input. This is applied before the mass-based allocation — so if your company owns 60% of the electricity contract, only 60% of that contract's impact enters the allocation pool.

Transport routes are derived automatically from purchase and sales orders. Multi-leg routes are supported; each leg has its own transport mode and auto-calculated distance. Root geocodes departure and arrival addresses and computes distance from the resolved coordinates. Address match accuracy is displayed as a percentage score — lower accuracy results in less precise distance calculations.

The mass transported per product unit includes all packaging layers:

single_product_mass = BOM_mass + product_packaging_mass + logistics_packaging_mass

Impact_transport = ImpactFactor_tkm × distance_km × (single_product_mass ÷ 1000) × quantity

Each transport mode is matched once to an EcoInvent transport dataset in the Matching step and applied uniformly to all legs using that mode.

The Usage phase is optional and controlled by a company-level toggle. When enabled, it covers electricity consumption and consumables used during the product's service life.

Usage electricity is modelled using a global dataset — market group for electricity, low voltage, GLO (EcoInvent 3.11). Geography-specific usage electricity is not yet implemented; this is a known limitation for products used in regions with materially different grid mixes.

Impact_usage_electricity = ImpactFactor_GLO × electricity_kWh × purchased_quantity

Usage consumables carry both a direct production reference and an EoL reference:

Impact_usage_consumable = (ImpactFactor_direct + ImpactFactor_eol) × amount × purchased_quantity × conversion_factor

The End of Life phase is optional and controlled by a company-level toggle. A single waste treatment reference is assigned per product. EoL references assigned to a source product are automatically propagated to all proxy products derived from it.

Impact_eol = ImpactFactor_eol × total_BOM_mass × purchased_quantity

Under the EcoInvent cut-off system model, recycled feedstocks enter the product system burden-free. The environmental burden of primary material production is assigned to the first use; recycling processes are allocated to the receiving system. This means products using recycled inputs receive a lower material-phase impact than equivalent products using virgin materials.

No end-of-life credit is assigned for materials that will be recycled after use. The EoL phase models the actual waste treatment only. This is consistent with ISO 14044 §4.3.4.3 for open-loop recycling systems.

Each impact reference in Root's library stores a pre-characterized impact factor vector — one value per impact category per reference unit — derived from the selected LCIA method. At calculation time, Root applies the characterization factors directly:

Category_indicator_result = ImpactFactor_category × inventory_flow_quantity

Results across all phases are summed per category:

Total_product_impact = Σ(material) + Σ(packaging) + Σ(production) + Σ(inbound_transport) + Σ(outbound_transport) + Σ(usage) + Σ(eol)

This corresponds to the mandatory LCIA elements of ISO 14044 §4.4.2: selection of impact categories and characterization models, classification, and characterization. Normalisation, grouping, and weighting (optional elements under §4.4.3) are not implemented.

The table below lists all 25 results Root reports under EF v3.1. The 16 EF v3.1 impact categories are shown in bold; rows in regular weight are sub-indicators (the three climate change sub-indicators required by PEF/OEF, and the organics/inorganics breakdowns of the three USEtox-based toxicity categories). Sub-indicators are reported for contribution analysis and should not be added on top of the parent category total.

Root's Scenarios feature allows practitioners to model targeted input substitutions — replacing a material, switching a utility source, or changing a transport mode — and compare the resulting impact against the baseline. This supports structured sensitivity testing for specific inputs.

Where to find this in Root: Scenarios.

Root tracks matching completeness — the percentage of inventory items with a confirmed impact reference — and displays it per product in the Impact view. Items without a confirmed match contribute zero to the impact result; no default or fallback value is applied.

Address accuracy for transport geocoding is tracked as a percentage match score per address. Low-accuracy resolutions introduce uncertainty into distance calculations. All addresses should be reviewed and confirmed in the Matching — Addresses section before drawing conclusions from transport results.

Root is working on a thorough Data Quality Assessment, based on every impact reference matching performed and data source type, allowing for a more holistic interpretation of the results.