Conducting a life cycle assessment (LCA) or measuring a carbon footprint: how it works and what to expect

Are you considering to conduct a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) or calculate a carbon footprint to map out the environmental impact of your product? In this article, we explain how the process works and what to expect along the way.

Before you get started, it’s important to reflect on a few key questions. The four most important considerations are explained in this article and summarized in the figure below.

These elements help determine the approach of the study, what data is required, and what types of results can be expected.

There are many companies and consultants offering life cycle assessment and carbon footprint services in different shapes and forms — from automated tools to fully customized studies. At Foodprintsight, we provide tailored product LCAs, fully adapted to your specific context and objectives.

Are you a startup looking for a first insight into your product’s sustainability? A screening LCA offers a cost-effective, insightful view of the hotspots in your supply chain. Aiming for a more extensive assessment suitable for external communication or environmental claims? Then we can carry out a full LCA, requiring more detailed data, advanced modelling, and resulting in a comprehensive ISO-compliant report.

We also develop Excel tools, perform external reviews, conduct social LCAs, and calculate external costs.

Want to learn more about our services? Have a look here or feel free to contact us! Based on your needs, we’ll prepare a clear proposal outlining the goals, approach, timeline, and costs of the study.

Once you’ve selected an LCA provider, the project can begin! We’ll schedule a kick-off meeting to confirm the scope and objectives, gain insight into the product’s production process and data availability, and give a brief introduction to the LCA methodology. We’ll also align on the timeline and agree on how we’ll stay in touch during the process.

This is the most important — and often the most time-consuming — phase of a life cycle assessment (LCA) or carbon footprint study. Depending on the scope and product type, we’ll collect data on ingredients, energy use, emissions, transport, waste flows, and other relevant processes.

It can be difficult to assess what data is relevant and in what format it should be delivered. That’s why we provide custom data collection templates to make it clear exactly what is required. If some data is unavailable, no need to worry — we can supplement with high-quality secondary data from reliable sources like scientific literature or established LCA databases.

We thoroughly review the data you provide. Mistakes can easily occur, so we often follow up with questions if some values looks unclear, unusually high or low, or if we need more details.

Once the data is complete, we build a life cycle assessment model using LCA software SimaPro. In this model, we include all life cycle stages, inputs and outputs, and emissions associated with each stage. We use leading databases such as ecoinvent, Agri-footprint, and WFLDB.

If desired, we can also build a model in Excel – depending on your needs and how you plan to use the results.

At this stage, we carry out various types of analysis depending on the study’s objectives:

• Impact assessment: We calculate the environmental impact across all relevant impact categories, using assessment methods such as ReCiPe or EF 3.0. This can be limited to climate change (in the case of a carbon footprint study), or include other categories such as water use, land use, or eutrophication.
• Contribution analysis: This analysis calculates the contribution of each life cycle stage to the total environmental impact of a product. It reveals where in the supply chain the environmental “hotspots” are and how they are caused — do the biggest impacts occur at the ingredient level, during transport, or in processing? And which specific process within a stage contributes the most?
• Sensitivity analysis: This analysis shows how sensitive the results are to certain assumptions made during modelling. For example, if economic allocation is used and there is uncertainty around pricing, a sensitivity analysis can test the effect of using higher or lower prices.
• Scenario analysis: Curious about the impact of using a different ingredient, energy source, or processing method? We can model and compare such alternatives using scenario analysis.
• Uncertainty analysis: Typically performed as part of a full LCA, this analysis shows the uncertainty margins of the results, through a Monte Carlo simulation.

Depending on your preferences and goals, we present the results in a presentation, short report, full ISO-compliant report, visual summary, or infographic.

Curious to learn more about conducting a Life Cycle Assessment or carbon footprint study – or how we can support you? Don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re happy to explore what’s possible and find the right solution for your needs.