Full Life Cycle Assessment, automated

A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) quantifies a product's environmental impacts across its entire life cycle, from raw material extraction to end of life. Unlike a carbon footprint, which measures only climate change, a full LCA covers multiple impact categories such as water use, land use, eutrophication, and resource use. It follows the ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 standards.

A Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) measures a single category: climate change, in kg CO₂e. Full LCA is the complete analysis: it adds the other 15 EF v3.1 impact categories on the same basis. In Devera, Full LCA is the complete analysis and PCF is a simpler, lower-cost option that covers carbon only. The carbon figure is identical in both.

The 16 impact categories of the EF v3.1 method: climate change, ozone depletion, human toxicity (cancer and non-cancer), particulate matter, ionising radiation, photochemical ozone formation, acidification, eutrophication (terrestrial, freshwater, and marine), freshwater ecotoxicity, land use, water use, and resource use (fossils and minerals/metals).

We use Environmental Footprint (EF) v3.1, the method behind the European Commission's Product Environmental Footprint (PEF). Characterisation factors and impact vectors are computed with Ecoinvent 3.9.1 via Brightway, never invented. The carbon footprint methodology is independently validated by SGS to ISO 14040:2006 and ISO 14044:2006.

Run a Full LCA directly: it is the complete 8-credit analysis covering all 16 categories, ready in minutes. If you only need carbon, choose the simpler PCF (5 credits) and add the other 15 categories whenever you want (+3 credits). We show you the estimated coverage for your product before any charge.

Coverage is the share of your product's impact backed by real data in each category. When a component has no characterised data for a category, it is reported as "n/a" rather than guessing a value. We show coverage per category transparently, in line with the ISO 14044 treatment of missing data.

The three toxicity categories (human toxicity cancer and non-cancer, and freshwater ecotoxicity) carry higher model uncertainty. Water use is computed with the AWARE factor as a global average, not regionalised, so two identical products in an arid or humid region get the same value. We flag these so they are read with care, exactly as in the platform.

For ecodesign and prioritisation: seeing where a product's real impact sits beyond carbon, avoiding burden shifting between categories, comparing materials and suppliers on a multi-criteria basis, and supporting substantiated environmental claims under the EU Green Claims Directive. It is a screening-level LCA and does not replace a critically reviewed EPD.