An LCA study involves a thorough inventory of the energy and materials that are required across the industry value chain of the product, process or service, and calculates the corresponding emissions to the environment.
There are many interpretations of the scope and depth of the LCA methodology. One of the most used guidelines is ISO 14040 & ISO 14044
, and EN15804 for the building industry
. These are often supplemented with industry specific calculation rules (for packaging PCR 2019:13). The European Union is also putting efforts into a standardized method for product environmental footprints (PEF), but that is still under development.
Although these analyses are very well thought, the time and efforts dedicated to put together a formal life cycle assessment is enormous and requires either in-house expertise or the support from a LCA expert.
Therefore it leads to a poor industry adoption rate of approximately <1% and therefore not able to make a significant shift in the prevention of climate change.
Together with the non-profit organization Sustainability Impact Metrics, Pickler developed a transparent LCA based methodology that is compatible with existing standards but uses a more practical and cost effective method that is within reach of >95% of the packaging industry.
The calculations of Pickler have still a good accuracy, since the Scope 2 and Scope 3 data from the Idemat tables are calculated according formal LCA procedures by means of the dedicated Simapro and Open LCA software. For the calculation rules of Idemat see https://www.ecocostsvalue.com/lca/idemat-calculation-rules/