What is a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) about?
A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA ) analyzes the environmental impact of a product, process or service along its entire life cycle: from the extraction of raw materials to production, use and disposal. Compared to the Product Carbon Footprint (PCF ), an LCA takes significantly more environmental categories into account and therefore offers a more holistic basis for well-founded decisions.
Why is an LCA important?
A life cycle assessment helps companies to visualize environmental influences in various impact categories and at the same time creates transparency along complex, often global value chains.
It enables compliance with regulatory requirements and reporting obligations, serves as a sound basis for decision-making in product development and purchasing and identifies ecological hotspots in order to leverage optimization potential in a targeted manner.
The question is no longer whether companies should analyze their environmental impact - but how holistically, efficiently and future-proof they do so.
What is assessed in the LCA?
An LCA examines all phases of the product life cycle - and also a wide range of environmental impacts, not just CO₂:
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Climate change (global warming potential, CO₂ equivalents)
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Acidification (e.g. due to SO₂, NOₓ)
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Eutrophication (nutrient inputs into soils & water bodies)
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Ozone depletion potential
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Fine dust formation & air pollutants
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Resource utilization (fossil, mineral, renewable)
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Toxicological effects on humans & the environment
Substain supports you in the complete balancing of all these effects - automated and standard-compliant.
Calculating an LCA - how it works
As with the PCF, the calculation is based on product structures and supply chain data, which are linked to scientifically sound life cycle assessment data:
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Enter / import parts lists
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Integrate primary data from suppliers
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Link with life cycle assessment databases (e.g. ecoinvent)
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Calculate environmental impact in several categories
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Analyze, export and communicate results
With Substain, you can map all of this via XLS upload or via ERP interfaces such as SAP or Salesforce.
Norms & Standards
Safe accounting: These standards give you orientation
Your advantages with Substain at a glance:
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Holistic: covers all relevant environmental impacts - from CO₂ and resource use to toxicity.
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Standard-compliant: Based on ISO 14040/44, GHG standard and other common frameworks.
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Data-based: Utilizes product structures and supplier data as well as leading life cycle assessment databases.
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Automated: Data import via ERP interface or Excel upload - always up-to-date.
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Scalable: From individual products to complete product portfolios across multiple locations.
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Reportable: Results immediately as a report or dashboard - for reporting, communication and management.
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