Our Top 5 Life Cycle Assessment Softwares

These days, there are so many idiosyncratic components that companies must remain mindful of if they want to implement sustainability and reduce their carbon footprint – such as ensuring they comply with environmental regulations, seeking the use of a carbon accounting company, and also conducting an LCA with life cycle assessment software.

Going green shouldn’t be a struggle, and that’s why at Greenly – we’re here to make your transition to ecological sustainability easier, and we’ve started by rounding up our top 5 life cycle assessment softwares.

In this article, we’ll recap what a life cycle assessment is, what the benefits are, and share our favorite life cycle assessment softwares.

A Life Cycle Assessment, often referred to as an LCA, is a way to assess the current environmental impact of a product – and this analysis encompasses the entire life of the product, from manufacturing to when it is thrown away by the consumer itself. 

The following is often taken into consideration during a Life Cycle Assessment:

• Energy used by the product
• The toxic substances associated with the product
• How natural resources are used in conjunction with the creation and usage of the product

👉 A Life Cycle Assessment will address the introduction, growth, maturity, and decline phase of a product – otherwise known as the four main stages of a product’s life cycle.

Life cycle assessment software is a tool meant to help companies measure the environmental impact of their products and services through each stage of the product’s life cycle. 

Similar to other carbon footprint reduction mechanisms such as carbon accounting, conducting a life cycle assessment without any third party assistance can prove tricky – and that’s where life cycle assessment software comes in.

👉 Life cycle assessment software is predominantly used to determine the current carbon footprint of consumer goods and services, often as an effort for a company to reduce their environmental impact and improve upon their own sustainability.

Life cycle assessment software is most commonly used by large companies that are subject to large carbon footprints, such as:

• Food & Packaging Companies 
• Entities in the Agriculture Industry
• Construction Companies
• Enterprises which manufacture chemicals

👉 However, it is important to remember that any company can seek the use of life cycle assessment software – and that an LCA is not limited to large enterprises.

Many life cycle assessment softwares are offered free of charge, but for the full-experience – companies will often need to commit to paying a fee to ensure the insight received from a life cycle assessment software is sufficient and personalized to their business needs.

Life cycle assessment software often works by using various databases that coincide with both eco-design and the current circular economy. However, efficient life cycle assessment software will do more than pull numbers from a database.

Here is a breakdown of how life cycle assessment software usually works:

1. Preliminary Steps – Prior to conducting a Life Cycle Assessment, a company should determine what their goals are before undergoing this process. These goals might include seeking to reduce emissions or to comply with new environmental regulations. 
2. Collecting Data – You can’t know how to get better unless you know your starting point. In order to analyze the environmental impact of your company’s product or service, life cycle assessment software refers to various databases to collect information regarding your product – such as the raw materials used, how the product is transported, and how the consumer typically discards the item.
3. Analysis – Once all of this data is collected, your life cycle assessment software of choice will determine the current ecological impact of your product or service. 
4. Visualization of Data – After the data has been synthesized, life cycle assessment software will usually provide visual graphs or reports to help the owner of the product or service understand their current environmental impact. This information is then used by stakeholders and business owners to make adjustments accordingly. 
5. Seek Improvement – Once the data collected and illustrated by the life cycle assessment software has been well comprehended, companies can then work together with their expertise of choice on how to implement viable action plans to improve their current environmental impact. This is often done by presenting the company with various scenarios, where the company can then choose their desired path for improvement.

👉 It is important that users of life cycle assessment software do not seek it as one-and-done mechanism to rectify their environmental impact, but rather – to use life cycle assessment software as an opportunity for continuous improvement.

By this point, we all know why it’s a good idea to conduct a Life Cycle Assessment – but why should the use of life cycle assessment software be on your company’s radar?

Well, conducting a Life Cycle Assessment without third party assistance can prove difficult and time consuming – but with the use of life cycle assessment software, a wide-variety of options and solutions become available without the need to think it through. 

This is because companies who seek the use of life cycle assessment software can not only sit back and let the experts do the math, but they can also enjoy specialized expertise, ideas, and solutions on how to improve their products and services moving forward.

👉 Therefore, the use of life cycle assessment software helps to ensure a company’s continuous improvement and growth regarding the environmental impact of their products and services. 

In addition to ensuring continuous ecological refinement of their products and services, companies that choose to work with a life cycle assessment software are bound to reap the following benefits:

• Save Money – Seeing as a Life Cycle Assessment often reveals the ways in which a company can improve their energy efficiency, working with a life cycle assessment software will often result in reduced utility bills over time. 
• Attract New Customers – Conducting a Life Cycle Assessment isn’t going to just be good for the planet, but also for your company’s wallet – as seeking to improve the ecological footprint of a company's products and services is likely to appeal to new and existing customers. Therefore, a Life Cycle Assessment also serves as a viable investment plan for your business.
• Newfound Creative Inspiration – Once a company gets the results from their Life Cycle Assessment, creativity will often be paramount in coming up with ways to reduce the current environmental impact of the product – such as getting innovative with how to package the product or how to source more sustainable materials for manufacturing. As a result, consistent Life Cycle Assessments are likely to inspire companies to get more imaginative for future designs – which could elicit the birth of new products or services that otherwise would have never come to fruition.

If your company has been in the market for new life cycle assessment software, look no further – we at Greenly have compiled a list of our top 5 life cycle assessment softwares.

Greenly

At Greenly, we offer our own life cycle assessment software – which works in four concrete steps: defining your goals, taking data inventory, conducting the actual assessment, and then communicating your results and methods to improve your product’s current environmental standing. 

Our experts are waiting to hear from you!

👉 Greenly is known for having personalized experts to help guide you every step of the way through your climate journey!

OneClick LCA

Specializing in life cycle assessment software for companies that partake in construction of buildings and other infrastructure, OneClick LCA is best for businesses looking to assess the environmental impact of their construction projects.

Making use of an extensive database for building materials, OneClick can help companies determine the current ecological footprint of their building projects and offer insight on how to ameliorate them in the future. 

👉 OneClick LCA is best for companies that work in construction or create an ecological footprint through their infrastructure projects.

EcoChain

Ecochain’s life cycle assessment software called Mobius is known for its easy-to-use interference, which makes it easy for first-time users to determine the environmental impact of their product. 

Companies that choose EcoChain will be given actionable advice shortly after the data from their Cycle Assessment has been analyzed.  

👉 EcoChain is known for being business user friendly.

openLCA

Known as the only free and globally available LCA software, openLCA is a free life cycle assessment software that can be used for both business and personal life cycle assessments. 

In addition to this, openLCA can be used to calculate your carbon footprint, production declaration, and to determine your water usage. Ultimately, this life cycle assessment software is a good place to start if you want to be environmentally conscious, but don’t want to break the bank.

👉 openLCA is known for its user-friendly interface and reliability.

GaBi Sphera 

Last on our list, Sphera is also known for having reputable life cycle assessment software called GaBi – as they combine the use of reliable software and modeling to help their clients understand their product’s ecological footprint. 

In fact, Sphera has access to over 20 databases – meaning the information they retrieve will be specific according to the sector of your business. 

👉 Sphera is known for large database.

Overall, the use of life cycle assessment software can allow your company to adapt its products and services in a world battling against climate change – and it’s never too late to start, especially when our personalized experts are awaiting your call.

If reading this article about life cycle assessment software has made you interested in reducing your carbon emissions to further fight against climate change – Greenly can help you!

It can be overwhelming to figure out how to conduct a life cycle assessment, but don’t worry – Greenly is here to help. Click here to see how Greenly can help you to conduct a life cycle assessment and improve the current environmental impact of your products and services.

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.