Life-cycle analysis and climate calculations

The life cycle perspective is a precondition for understanding an organisation’s environmental impact and implementing an effective environmental process. Customers and consumers are also increasingly demanding information about the carbon footprint of products and organisations.

How DGE can help:

We help you to analyse your product or organisation and calculate its environmental impact from a life-cycle perspective. This knowledge can then be used to make a difference. Carbon footprints and life-cycle analyses can be used to illustrate emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, land and water resource use and various types of contamination from raw material extraction. We help you find the right expressions and to calculate and evaluate the carbon footprints of your organisation or product so you can report them transparently, credibly and in accordance with the relevant standards. For example, we can help you calculate your carbon footprint in Scope 1, 2 and 3 according to the GHG Protocol as a basis for climate goals and compensation, or draw up a life-cycle assessment (LCA), carbon footprint and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for your products. Just a few of the standards we work with on the product side are ISO 14044, ISO 14067 and ISO 14025.

At DGE, we use SimaPro software for life-cycle assessments and we help you find the balance between specific data from your suppliers and your own operations on one side and general data from global life-cycle databases such as Ecoinvent, Agrifootprint etc. on the other. We also provide support to help you implement the results in your business, including through establishing goals and action plans, structuring communication, setting requirements during purchasing and designing working methods for product development.

What you should consider:

Developments in software, databases and standards have made life-cycle assessments so cost-effective that it is now self-evident for most companies to analyse their organisations and products from a life-cycle perspective. Requirements and expectations from customers and society are also increasing, which further reinforces the importance of acquiring good information for use in internal improvement processes, purchasing and communication.

 

While companies often have good knowledge of their own local impact, for the majority of organisations the greatest environmental impact is not to be found in proximity to their own site. So it is becoming increasingly clear that the company’s product development, sales and purchase processes are central to effective environmental work. Life-cycle assessments help to highlight this and in turn create awareness and commitment.

Helena Lindh

Helena specialises in life-cycle analysis and climate calculations and has many years’ experience of tailoring applications based on customer needs and expectations.