Welcome to the onboarding manual for our impact dashboards. This manual guides you through navigating the dashboards so you can interpret insights and make data-driven decisions effectively.
This article explains how the company impact dashboard works.
How your impact is shown
The dashboard presents your company impact as the total carbon footprint, the Environmental Cost Indicator (ECI), and each individual EF 3.1 impact category. You can switch between them freely — they're all shown through the same set of views, so there's no difference in how you navigate them:
Total carbon footprint — expressed in tonnes of CO2e, determined using the IPCC 2021 methodology and the GWP100 indicator, and aligned with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.
Environmental Cost Indicator (ECI) — a single € value that aggregates all impact categories. If Planet Earth had a bank account, this would be the amount invoiced.
EF 3.1 impact categories — the full set of Environmental Footprint metrics, spanning carbon, water and land use, toxicity, pollution, air and atmosphere, and resource depletion.
The same metrics apply to every score, so each impact category is explained in full just once. For a thorough explanation of every category and how Root converts your data into these scores, see What is characterisation and how does Root convert data into impact scores?
Use the year selector to set the timeframe. The completeness indicator in the top right shows how much of your data has been properly reported/matched. For instance, unmatched materials carry no impact and are flagged in the previous sections.
Curious to learn more? Read our blogs on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and the Environmental Cost Indicator.
Navigating the dashboard
Whichever metric you select — carbon footprint, ECI, or any other impact category — the dashboard shows the same views.
Total company footprint metric
Your total company footprint for the selected timeframe, shown in the unit of the metric you're viewing (tonnes of CO2e for the carbon footprint, euros for the ECI, etc.).
Company impact over time
This graph displays your total company footprint distributed across time.
Top contributors
This table shows the top contributing factors responsible for your footprint. It compares the impact of different business activities — for example, the impact of the kilometres driven by trucks versus the impact of specific materials or energy sources.
Company impact per segment
This pie chart breaks your footprint into three segments: materials, facilities, and transport.
Company impact per impact category
This view breaks your footprint down by impact category, showing how your activities affect different environmental factors. For what each category measures, see the characterisation article.
Carbon footprint by scope
The total carbon footprint has one additional breakdown that the other metrics don't: a split across scopes. This chart distributes your carbon footprint across scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions:
Scope 1 — direct emissions from owned or controlled sources.
Scope 2 — indirect emissions from purchased energy.
Scope 3 — all other indirect emissions in the company's value chain.
FAQ
What impact categories does Root calculate?
Root calculates your impact across the full set of EF 3.1 metrics — covering carbon, water and land use, toxicity, pollution, air and atmosphere, and resource depletion — and aggregates them into the Environmental Cost Indicator (ECI). Each category is explained in detail in What is characterisation and how does Root convert data into impact scores?
What happens after I upload data — is the dashboard immediately usable?
Yes, the dashboard is always up to date. We've removed the "Request Impact" button, so you'll instantly see the most current data based on your uploaded information.