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5 Things Softwares For a Life Cycle Assessment Must Have
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Just as it’s difficult to find the right doctor or pair of sneakers perfectly suited to your needs, it can prove challenging to find the right software for life cycle assessment for your company.
Softwares for a life cycle assessment should not only fit your company’s needs, but inspire changes to be made while remaining approachable and providing proper and professional guidance throughout the process.
In this article, we’ll review what a life cycle assessment is, why it’s important, software for a life cycle assessment, and 5 things softwares for a life cycle assessment should have.
What is a life cycle assessment?
A life cycle assessment, also known as an LCA, refers to the process of determining the environmental impact of a product or service over the course of its life – which ultimately can inspire companies to re-design their existing products or even develop new products to be more environmentally friendly.
“ LCA is becoming more important as environmental regulations tighten, customer expectations rise, and investors anticipate companies to demonstrate their efforts towards benefiting the environment before committing to any future agreements. ”
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A life cycle assessment is becoming more essential seeing as more companies are either being required or finding the intrinsic motivation and value in cultivating a more sustainable company. In the same way it’s difficult to know how to improve your mile-time or to improve your foreign language skills, it’s difficult to improve a product’s sustainability without knowing your current starting point – which is precisely what a life cycle assessment seeks to provide.
Some examples of softwares for a life cycle assessment include:
- Greenly
- OneClick LCA
- openLCA
- EcoChain
- GaBi Sphera
👉 Opting to use a life-cycle assessment software can help your company to receive expertise guidance and help to avoid legal or compliance issues as well as spark the needed creativity to develop more sustainable products in advance.
Why is it important to complete a life cycle assessment?
A life cycle assessment is becoming increasingly important seeing as sustainability is slowly proving itself to be a tacit requirement across all industries – as environmental regulations tighten, stakeholder expectations rise, and sustainability becomes more important to the average consumer.
“ Completing a life-cycle assessment is not only a way to avoid trouble with key stakeholders, investors, and government actors to your company – but can help to actually boost business performance and ensure long-term success as markets continue to evolve in line with the climate crisis. ”
A life cycle assessment is beneficial for your company because:
- It can boost creativity amongst employees, as it requires out-of-the-box thinking to develop new products in line with environmental regulations while still adhering to the wants and needs of customers;
- Demonstrate the importance of transparency in your efforts to rectify the environmental impact of your products and services, which can help to increase sustainability across various industries;
- Can help your business to stay ahead of your competitors and also comply with current or future environmental regulations with ease;
- Identify areas where your product or service may be most emissive and provide opportunities for new jobs within your company;
- Benefit your surrounding areas by helping to mitigate excess air pollution or other deleterious production practices which could have an impact on the surrounding ecosystems, wildlife, and overall human health.
👉 The products and services we create are often more emissive than we think, and a life cycle assessment can help our businesses to not only improve upon our existing products – but educate us on how to go about designing new products and services in the future.
What are some examples of software for a life cycle assessment?
Some examples of software to be used for a life cycle assessment include SimaPro, openLCA, and EarthSmart.
“ Life cycle assessment software is constantly evolving in order to adhere to the growing expectations on behalf of environmental regulations and more precise environmental goals being set by companies themselves. ”
We’ve already covered our top five life cycle assessments, but here’s a recap of some of our top picks – including Greenly’s own life cycle assessment software.
Greenly
We offer a software for life cycle assessment – where we work to determine the LCA of your product or service in four concrete steps: defining your goals, taking data inventory, conducting the actual assessment, and then sharing your results with you to help craft new ideas for a more eco-friendly product. and methods to improve your product’s current environmental standing.
💡Our personalized approach makes us a great choice for software for a life cycle assessment.
Our experts are waiting to hear from you!
openLCA
A free and globally available software for lifecycle assessment, openLCA is a free LCA software that works for both personal and professional purposes.
The accessibility of openLCA is what makes it most suitable and appropriate for people or businesses just getting started with reducing their environmental impact.
💡 openLCA has user-friendly interface, which helps to make it simple and functional for beginners seeking to reduce their carbon footprint.
GaBi Sphera
Sphera is known for having reliable life cycle assessment software called GaBi – which combines the use of software and modeling for a more robust understanding of a products’ carbon footprint.
💡One of the overarching benefits of Sphera is their large database.
👉Ultimately, software for life cycle assessment is deemed good or bad based on your company’s individual needs to fight against climate change – but there are still a few components that all softwares should strive to include regardless of their target audience.
What are 5 things softwares must have for a life cycle assessment?
A good life cycle assessment software needs to fit the needs of your company, and even though this criteria is bound to vary depending on your business and your respective environmental or personal goals.
“ While it’s true that all software for life cycle assessment is bound to vary, there are key components that all softwares for life cycle assessment should strive to incorporate. ”
Here are 5 things we think all softwares for life cycle assessments should include:
1. Large Database & Network
Having access to a large pool of resources, available data, and a strong network can help open doors and ideas for new ways to reduce the environmental impact of a product.
“ Think of when you’re trying to round up people to do a march for a charity – it will inevitably be easier to recruit participants if you have a broad network of people to ask. The same goes for softwares for a life cycle assessment and trying to find the resources to curate a more eco-friendly product or service. ”
👉 Access to a large database can help to ensure data accuracy and allow the software for LCA to be relevant for a wide variety of products and services – as opposed to offering a niche network only suitable for specific companies.
2. User-Friendly & Personalized Approach
Nothing can deter someone from following through with a goal or trying out a new app than a complicated interface. Therefore, it’s crucial to ensure that all softwares for a life cycle assessment create the most user-friendly experience as possible – as this helps to ensure that LCA remains approachable for any and all businesses.
Curating a user-friendly interface for a life cycle assessment software includes:
- Easy navigation tools to avoid incorrect data input or communication errors
- Clear text and labels to avoid confusion
- Various interactive features to help the user feel immersed in the world of LCA
“ A user-friendly interface is imperative for softwares for life cycle assessments as many people and businesses alike looking to get started with LCA are not expected to have a background in how LCA works. ”
💡 A large database allows users access to accurate and updated data without needing to research the latest information themselves.
In addition to this, softwares for life cycle assessments which offer personalized assistance to help guide companies through their LCA can prove extremely useful throughout the process – especially for beginners.
3. Reporting & Visualization
Softwares for life cycle assessments should include offers to export reports for businesses, and not only for the company’s awareness – but in order to share their current progress and climate efforts to other relative businesses across the market and to stakeholders.
However, reports may be too numbers based to appeal to all relative audiences – and that’s why visuals are important, too.
Softwares for life cycle assessments should also aim to offer charts, maps, graphs, and other visualization tools which can assist users in understanding the trends associated with the LCA of their products and services more easily.
4. Scenario Simulators for Various Situations
A good software for life cycle assessment should be able to reveal the impact of a product, whether good or bad, depending on various scenarios – such as if specific improvements are made or if other external factors get in the way of reducing the product’s overall impact.
💡These various scenarios and subsequent simulators can help to provide incentive to reduce the environmental impact of a product, as tangible evidence of its potential improvements can help to spur action that otherwise wouldn’t come to fruition.
Scenario simulators can also help your company curb the current emissions on a product or service to help avoid legal fines or in the event it will soon be required to comply with any upcoming environmental regulations.
5. Integration with Other Tools
Good softwares for a life cycle assessment will seek to incorporate other imperative software tools which are paramount to your company’s climate success – such as including management platforms or inviting suppliers for greater engagement for a better understanding of how the environmental impact of the product comes to materialization.
Think of the fitness monitor on your Apple watch or other pedometer. It’s beneficial to have access to more than one type of data – such as how many steps you took, miles you walked, or stairs you climbed.
Oftentimes, this data can be cross referenced and automatically input into other apps – such as an app designated for weight loss which can help to track your progress. The same goes for integrating softwares for life cycle assessments with other tools – as it can help to support other environmental endeavors within your company.
“ Adding other tools to softwares for a life cycle assessment can help to streamline the process for a life cycle assessment and simplify data exchange throughout the LCA. ”
Overall, it’s important to pick a software tool that is most suitable to your companies goals and needs – but it’s also important to remember that there are certain features that all softwares for life cycle assessments should strive to include for optimal performance and the best chances at helping your business to reduce emissions and create more eco-friendly products and services.
What About Greenly?
If reading this article about what 5 things softwares for a life cycle assessment should have has made you interested in reducing your carbon emissions to further fight against climate change – Greenly can help you!
It can be challenging to find the right life cycle assessment software for your company, but don’t worry – Greenly is here to help. Click here to schedule a demo to see how Greenly can help you find ways to effectively conduct an LCA.
Greenly can help you make an environmental change for the better, starting with a carbon footprint assessment to know how much carbon emissions your company produces.
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