How we can help you

Life Cycle Assessment

Carbon footprint

Product Environmental Footprint

Environmental footprint training

LCA is a technique to evaluate the environmental impact associated with the life of a product or service from cradle to grave. 

Fundamentals of LCA- online training

Quantifying the environmental impact

Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) and Carbon Footprints are research methods to gain insight in the full life cycle of a product. It quantifies all inputs and outputs. This means all phases of a product are taken into account and analysed, from raw materials, packaging, transport, retail and consumer towards disposal or recycling. This means a product will be studied from cradle-to-grave. An LCA shows where the environmental impact in the supply chain takes place. Hotspots are the locations in the supply chain with the highest environmental impact. Disclosure of these hotspots is an opportunity to improve a certain process or product. Eventually, this will lead towards savings in for instance raw materials, energy use and cost and a more sustainable product. In some cases the environmental advantages can also be used as selling point. 

Sound basis to monitor environmental performance

Life Cycle Assessments and Carbon Footprints give insights in the environmental impacts in the supply chain of a product. This forms a sound basis for companies and organisations which aim to monitor their environmental performance and develop strategies to reduce their impact. Life Cycle Assessments and Carbon Footprints are executed according to standardised and internationally recognised methods, such as ISO ISO14040/44. Besides that, it is important to use reliable data, in order to reach consistent and transparent results. 

Why quantify the environmental impact?

Investigating the impact of a product or process had many advantages. It is an opportunity to tackle various sustainability issues.
Some examples:

  • Insights in saving options
    You aim to get insights in saving options for energy and materials which are used in the production process.
  • Increase market value
    You want to increase market value, for instance by communication about the sustainability of your products.
  • Insights in the environmental impact
    Your clients or investors want insights in the environmental impact of your products or production process.
  • Substantiate a strategic decision 
    You want to make certain strategic decisions, which need supporting information.
  • Development of innovations
    You want to know the environmental advantages of certain innovation ideas.

Different types of LCAs and Carbon footprints

LCA/footprint

Internal/external use

Review/verification

Data

Deliverables

Project duration

Screening LCA

 Internal Internal review Company specific Report and/or presentation Appr. 1-3 months*

Product LCA

 External Independent review (1 expert) Company specific & supply chain specific Report and presentation Appr. 2-5 months*

Comparative LCA

 External Independent external review (3 experts) Company specific & supply chain specific Report and presentation Appr. 4-10 month*

*Depending on the amount and complexity of the system

Examples of our LCA and carbon footprint work

red strawberries
Case study

Quantifying the sustainability of an innovation in strawberries

Life Cycle AssessmentCrop cultivation

We conducted an LCA of Limore One, an innovative strawberry variety from Limgroup. The results support Limgroup with validation of the sustainability benefits and identify hotspots for further improvement. 

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Oatly comparative LCA studies
case study

Critically reviewed Life Cycle Assessment studies of Oatly products and comparison with cow’s dairy products

Life Cycle Assessment

An overview of the publicly available LCA and footprint studies for Oatly.  Through critically reviewed LCA studies, we have compared the environmental footprint of various Oatly products with their cow’s dairy counterparts.

 

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case study

Building an accurate footprint strategy with Blonk's Environmental Footprinting Modules

Software solutionsCustomer Case

Implementing a consistent footprint monitoring strategy can be challenging, because of for instance complex and largescale data collection, lack of expertise on environmental footprinting calculations. Blonk's multidisciplinary team, skilled in environmental footprint analysis, software engineering, and data generation, is here to support. We support Albert Heijn with CO2-footprint calculations of fruit and vegetable products.

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Interested in a (comparative) LCA or Carbon Footprint analysis?

Get in touch

Jasper Scholten
Director Consultancy

Please get in touch with Jasper if you would like to learn more about our Environmental Footprinting and LCA services.