What best describes your business requirements?
- We want to know how green our products are.
Perform a life cycle assessment. - A retail partner requires sustainability reports.
Make our supply chain green. - We want to cash in on green marketing.
Help us create EPDs and qualify for ecolabels. - We're applying for U.S. federal loans or grants.
Produce LCA data for our applications.
Meet the sustainability demands of retailers, consumers and governments
Learn how green your products are with a life cycle assessment
A life cycle assessment, or LCA, is a more comprehensive version of a carbon footprint. Instead of focusing solely on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, an LCA also looks at water, waste, conservation of natural resources and additional pollutants.
Getting such a comprehensive view of environmental impact isn't as daunting as it sounds. In fact, it takes almost as much time and money to produce a carbon footprint as it does to produce an LCA.
That's why FirstCarbon advocates smart practices like:
- Calculating your carbon footprint, energy efficiency and LCA all at once. All three tasks require similar data, so why do the same work over and over and over?
- Focusing on processes, not just products. Performing a life cycle assessment of your entire manufacturing process lets you simultaneously evaluate multiple product lines.
-
Outsourcing routine data-collection tasks. Much of the LCA work isn't scientific, it's downright mundane – such as inputting data from utility bills. Why not leave the data processing to us?
Learn more about sustainability outsourcing - Using LCA data to drive business decisions. Learn how to interpret your LCA report and use it to improve supply-chain and product-line sustainability.
Get a life-cycle-assessment consultation.
Answer to retailers and move toward a green supply chain
Retail giants Walmart in the United States and Tesco in the United Kingdom have announced plans to put "sustainability indexes" on the products they carry, so consumers can make informed choices.
That means one thing if you're a supplier … or a supplier to a supplier … or a supplier to a supplier to a supplier: Retailers or the suppliers who answer to them will be demanding the necessary data from you.
In fact, Walmart is already requiring its top suppliers to fill out a 15-question sustainability survey.
Retailers want to know the "cradle to gate" impact of products – everything that happens from the time someone scoops the natural resources out of the earth to the time the finished goods hit the retailer's warehouse.
FirstCarbon provides the answers through a life cycle assessment that factors in the environmental impact of your suppliers, as well as your own production and transportation processes.
Get a green-supply-chain consultation.
Cash in on green marketing with an EPD or ecolabel
Green marketing is big business. For example, according to the Organic Trade Association, the amount Americans spent on organic food grew 2,800 percent between 1990 and 2008. And Clorox landed 40 percent market share just 10 months after launching its Green Works brand of household cleaners.
But green marketing means more than declaring yourself green with pretty words and bright pictures.
In most cases, before you can put a recognized, trusted sustainability label on your products, such as the European Union Ecolabel, you must go through some form of third-party verification to prove that what you say is actually true.
A life cycle assessment provides the backbone of data required for many ecolabel certifications, as it provides information on energy consumption, resource use, pollutants and emissions that ecolabel applications typically ask for.
One type of ecolabel, known as an Environmental Product Declaration or EPD, requires a life cycle assessment based on ISO 14025 standards. EPDs are growing in popularity, especially in Europe. In fact, beginning in January 2011, France will require mandatory EPDs for all consumer goods sold within its borders. Other countries are considering similar legislation.
Let FirstCarbon perform your LCA, create your EPD report and advise you on other types of ecolabels.
Get an EPD and ecolabel consultation.
Apply for DOE loan guarantees and
other U.S. programs that require LCA data
If your company is engaged in clean-energy projects, your application for the U.S. Department of Energy's Loan Guarantee Program is not complete without LCA data. Other federal agencies, such as the USDA, also require LCAs for certain loans or grants.
Take advantage of FirstCarbon's expertise in performing LCAs and make sure your application is both accurate and complete.