At the core of any sustainability program is the ability to look beyond an organization’s immediate operations and understand a product’s full environmental impact across its entire life cycle.
This requires a thorough evaluation of all activities that occur inside and outside their walls, from the extraction of raw materials for production through the product’s end of life.
For nearly half a century, Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) have helped companies uncover upstream and downstream activities that contribute to the environmental footprint of their products. LCAs enable organizations to measure and reduce environmental impacts, improve resource efficiency and prepare for compliance with global regulations.
By adding depth and multidimensionality to supply chain data, LCAs reveal insights into emissions, resource use and waste management.
Forward-thinking organizations use LCAs to gain visibility into a product’s environmental impact at every stage of its life cycle. This insight delivers a comprehensive, quantifiable view of environmental performance, supporting better decisions on product improvements, new designs and real-world impact.
Sphera combines LCA software and consulting expertise to help more than 1,500 sustainability leaders attain accurate, scalable and auditable environmental impact insights that power their sustainability strategies.
Over the last 30 years, customers have used Sphera’s LCA solutions to:
- Identify environmental hotspots across materials and processes
- Target high-impact improvement opportunities
- Drive sustainable innovation and strengthen brand reputation
- Differentiate products through improved sustainability performance
- Increase operational and manufacturing efficiency
- Substantiate green claims with credible, reliable LCA results.
Calculating the carbon footprint of a product portfolio with LCAs
To meet growing customer demand for Product Carbon Footprints (PCFs), Endress+Hauser, a global leader in industrial process measurement and automation, partnered with Sphera to develop a scalable, parameterized LCA model for the company’s diverse product portfolio.
To ensure accuracy and consistency in PCF reporting across multiple product centers, Endress+Hauser implemented Sphera’s LCA for Experts and LCA Calculator software. The parametric LCA model developed by Sphera’s experts enables users to easily switch between in-depth LCA modeling with the LCA for Experts software and streamlined PCF reporting via the LCA Calculator.
By working with Sphera, Endress+Hauser successfully implemented efficient, transparent PCF reporting across five product centers, covering more than 70% of its portfolio within eight months.
“With Sphera’s guidance and support, we successfully harmonized our LCA data collection and models to generate carbon footprints for most of our product portfolio,” said Hernan Gomez, Portfolio Manager, Technology and Portfolio at Endress+Hauser.
The PCF reporting tool, developed by Sphera and applicable to all product centers, is based on a single LCA model that harmonizes product differences, bill of materials (BOM) structures and data quality. This approach is both time- and cost-efficient for our experts and supports our long-term sustainability strategy,” Gomez added.
Applying LCA to decarbonization goals
As part of its ambition to become a net-zero company, Mercedes-Benz uses LCAs to quantify and reduce greenhouse gas emissions across its vehicle life cycle. A huge proportion of these emissions do not occur at Mercedes-Benz locations, but in its supply chain.
Mercedes-Benz worked with Sphera to apply standardized LCA methodologies and high-quality datasets to model emissions across materials, components and production processes. Using Sphera’s LCA software, the company can assess environmental impacts at scale and gain transparency into complex global supply chains, particularly for emission-intensive materials such as steel, aluminum and plastics.
The LCA results enable Mercedes-Benz to identify emissions hotspots, evaluate decarbonization scenarios, and support strategic decisions on supplier engagement, material selection and technology pathways. These insights play a critical role in setting reduction priorities and measuring progress toward long-term climate targets.
“Sphera’s sophisticated supply chain LCA models and their extensive supply chain understanding helped us gain transparency in our supply chain,” said Dr. Klaus Ruhland, Sustainability, Corporate Environmental Protection and Energy Management, Mercedes-Benz AG. “Quantifying decarbonization pathways for our main materials was the missing piece of our corporate decarbonization strategy.”
Using LCAs to improve packaging sustainability
As part of its commitment to sustainability, OLYMP, a leading producer of shirts, knitwear, sweatwear and accessories, wanted to reduce the environmental impact of its product packaging while working to meet the criteria for the company’s sustainability flag GREEN CHOICE by 2025.
OLYMP used Sphera’s LCA for Packaging tool to assess the environmental impacts of their packaging solution. The LCAs led to reductions and substitutions in packaging components, as well as changing the material for the shirt bags from virgin paper to 100% recycled paper. The data, along with the help of Dekra, also backed the company’s claims about the environmental benefits of its packaging solutions.
“We are now able to assess the environmental impacts of our packaging with reasonable effort. Sphera and Dekra helped us to substantiate our claims with robust data, which facilitates external communication,” said Claudia Kurz, Corporate Responsibility Manager, OLYMP Bezner KG.
Learn how to put LCAs to work
When organizations embed LCAs into their decision-making, they gain the clarity needed to innovate sustainably, scale with confidence, and meet the rising expectations of regulators, investors and customers. Sphera’s combination of software, data and consulting expertise equips sustainability leaders with the insights needed to assess environmental impacts of their products and take measurable action.
To learn how LCAs can accelerate your sustainability goals, strengthen compliance programs and unlock improvements across your product portfolio, connect with Sphera’s sustainability experts.
Other resources to consider:
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) Services
LCA Sustainable Packaging Software
Managed LCA Database
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) Services
