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 product impact dashboard works. It is the most complete of the dashboards: it gives you a full life cycle assessment of each product, showing the impact of every stage involved in the sourcing, transportation, and production of your products.
How your impact is shown
Using the Impact selector at the top of the dashboard, you can view the product impact as the total carbon footprint, the Environmental Cost Indicator (ECI), or any individual EF 3.1 impact category (such as water use). 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:
Carbon footprint (total) — expressed in 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, each in its own unit (for example, water use in m³ world Eq deprived).
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?
You'll also find a Total / Single toggle throughout the dashboard. Total shows the combined impact of all units of a product over the selected period, while Single shows the footprint of a single product unit.
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, the dashboard shows the same views.
Product footprint
The total footprint attributed to products for the selected timeframe, shown in the unit of the metric you're viewing.
Product impact per life cycle phase
This chart distributes your product footprint across all life cycle phases: raw material, packaging, production, inbound transport, outbound transport, usage, and end of life. It shows where in the life cycle your products' impact is concentrated.
Top contributing products
This table ranks the products contributing most to your product footprint, with each product's share of the total. Use the Per product / Per category toggle to rank individual products or product categories, and Show more to expand the list. Selecting a product opens its detailed breakdown (see Product deep dive below).
Impact per product
This table breaks the footprint down for each product, with a column for Product mass and a column for every life cycle phase. Use the Life cycle phase and Impact scope tabs to switch between a breakdown by life cycle phase and a breakdown by emission scope (1, 2 and 3), the Absolute / Relative (%) toggle to switch between absolute values and shares, and the download button to export the data. Selecting a product opens its detailed breakdown.
Impact per product category
This table provides the same breakdown as Impact per product, but grouped by product category. It uses the same Life cycle phase and Impact scope tabs, the Absolute / Relative (%) toggle, and a download button.
Product footprint by scope
The total carbon footprint has one additional breakdown that the other metrics don't: a split across scopes. This view distributes your product 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.
For product companies, the majority of emissions (typically over 85%) fall under Scope 3.
Product deep dive
Selecting a product — from the Top contributing products list or either of the breakdown tables — opens a detailed view of that product in a modal. It carries the same year, Total / Single, and Impact controls as the main dashboard.
At the top, the modal shows the product's footprint in the selected metric alongside the number of units purchased, sold, and the number of materials, with a bar splitting the footprint across the seven life cycle phases.
Below that, Key impact contributors by life cycle phase gives a detailed analysis of how materials, transport modes, utility sources, and other factors affect the product's impact, organised into tabs:
Material — every material in the product, with its share, quantity, impact, supplier, and address.
Packaging — the top contributing packaging materials, and a split between product and logistics packaging.
Production — the top contributing utility sources, the production impact per utility type (e.g. electricity vs heat), and a facility-source breakdown showing consumption and impact per source.
Transport — the inbound and outbound transport contributors, with the transport modes and distances.
Usage — the top contributing usage factors (e.g. electricity consumed in use) and the usage impact per type.
End of life — the contributors to the product's end-of-life impact.
Exporting an LCA report
From the product deep dive, you can export the product's full results as an LCA report, giving you a complete, shareable life cycle assessment of the product outside the platform.
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 is the difference between Total and Single?
Total shows the combined impact of all units of a product over the selected period (based on the quantities purchased or produced), while Single shows the footprint of one unit of the product. Single is useful for comparing products like-for-like; Total reflects their real-world weight in your footprint.
What are the life cycle phases?
Each product's footprint is split across seven phases that follow it from cradle to grave: raw material (the materials it's made of), packaging, production (manufacturing at your facilities), inbound and outbound transport, usage (resources consumed while it's used), and end of life (its treatment after disposal).
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.
Why might my footprint look incomplete?
The dashboard only includes data that has been matched to an impact reference. Anything that hasn't been matched yet isn't counted toward your footprint, so completing your matches in the Matching section gives you the most accurate picture.