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A Life Cycle Assessment, or LCA, quantifies the environmental impact of a product or service across its life cycle. For carbon, that means measuring greenhouse gas emissions from raw materials through to end-of-life, for a clearly defined product and use case. LCAs are the backbone of credible product carbon footprints, and of most eco-labels and product-level claims.

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The shift in question

An organisation footprint asks “what are our emissions as a company?” An LCA asks something narrower and harder: “what is the impact of this product, per unit, across its life?” Answering that requires four things:
  • A functional unit: one bottle, one t-shirt, one use of a service
  • System boundaries: which life cycle stages are in
  • Emissions quantified at each stage
  • Everything summed into a per-unit figure in kg CO₂e
This thinking underpins Product assessments in Salvidia.

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The functional unit

The functional unit answers: what exactly are we measuring the impact of?
  • 1 × 500 ml bottled drink, delivered to customer
  • 1 t-shirt, washed 30 times, then disposed of
  • 1 kg of product sold at factory gate
  • 1 use of an online service
It matters for three reasons. It makes results comparable between products. It forces clarity about how the product is actually used. And it prevents the misleading per-company comparisons that make product claims collapse under scrutiny. Note the t-shirt example: “washed 30 times” is part of the unit. Change that assumption and the footprint changes with it, which is exactly why the unit has to be stated.

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System boundaries

Boundaries define which parts of the life cycle you include.
Covers raw material extraction, manufacturing and assembly, packaging, and distribution up to the factory gate or point of sale. Excludes the use phase and end-of-life.Useful when you have good visibility upstream, when use and disposal vary enormously between customers, or when you want a simpler starting point.
Document your boundary in the assessment methodology. A footprint without a stated boundary cannot be compared to anything.

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The five life cycle stages

  1. Raw materials and extraction: mining, agriculture, chemical feedstocks, and transport to processing
  2. Manufacturing and assembly: factory energy, processing and forming, process emissions, production waste
  3. Packaging and distribution: primary, secondary, and tertiary packaging, transport to warehouses and customers, storage
  4. Use phase: energy and consumables during use, maintenance, cleaning, replacement parts
  5. End-of-life: recycling, reuse, recovery, landfill, incineration, and transport to treatment
Product assessments in Salvidia are organised around these same five stages, so the data you gather maps straight onto them.

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LCA and carbon footprints

A full LCA can cover many impact categories: water use, toxicity, land use, and more. Salvidia focuses on climate impact in CO₂e. So when a result reads “3.4 kg CO₂e per unit,” that is the climate portion of an LCA for that product, given your functional unit, system boundary, stages included, and the factors applied.

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The data you’ll need

Materials

Material types, weights or volumes per unit, and recycled versus virgin content where known.

Manufacturing

Energy use per process or batch, production location because grid factors differ, and process yields and scrap rates.

Packaging and distribution

Packaging types and weights, transport modes and distances, warehousing where material.

Use and end-of-life

Expected lifetime and usage patterns, energy or consumables in use, and disposal assumptions.

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Why LCA thinking helps

You may never need a full ISO-compliant study. Thinking in life cycle terms still pays, because it stops you fixating on manufacturing or shipping when the real hotspot is elsewhere. For plenty of products, materials dominate. For appliances and vehicles, the use phase dwarfs everything upstream. You cannot know which without looking across the whole life, and design decisions made without that view are usually aimed at the wrong stage. Salvidia’s Product assessments aim for a practical, decision-focused version of this rather than an academic exercise.

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How it works in Salvidia

1

Define the product and functional unit

Name the product and specify what one unit means: 1 bottle, 1 garment, 1 service use.
2

Choose your system boundary

Cradle-to-gate, cradle-to-grave, or a specific segment. Record the choice in your assessment notes.
3

Add data by life cycle stage

Enter or import your figures against each life cycle stage.
4

Review the per-unit footprint

Salvidia calculates total impact per functional unit and breaks it down by stage and category.
5

Compare scenarios

Duplicate an assessment to compare design options: different materials, packaging, or suppliers, against the same functional unit.
That last step is where product footprints earn their keep. Comparing two material choices against a fixed functional unit turns a reporting number into a design decision.

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Common uses

Design and R&D

Guide material choices, manufacturing locations, packaging design, and durability targets.

Customer communication

Provide credible per-unit footprints in sales materials, RFPs, and tender responses.

Standards and labels

Support eco-labels, certifications, and frameworks that expect product-level impact data.

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Where to go next