Measuring product environmental impacts

Examining the importance of assessing products to understand the impacts they may have on the environment, human health and natural resources.

by Nicola Pichel-Juan

Sustainability is high on the agenda for most organisations today. A key focus of that work is likely to include measuring and understanding the environmental impacts of products. This article will explore why organisations may choose to measure the impact of their products and it will also consider the different methodologies and initiatives that can support this work.

Why is it important to measure the environmental impact of a product?

Firstly, if an organisation does not know what impacts its products might have on the environment, it cannot do anything to reduce them. It may also be useful to compare products or supply chain options. This will provide insight on where to focus efforts to reduce impacts and to understand what would happen if, for example, different materials are used.

Further considerations involve customer pressure and companies simply seeing it as the ‘right thing to do.’ However, the biggest driver for organisations to consider the environmental impacts of their products is legislation. There is now legislation that requires the following:

• greater transparency about products and their supply chains
• clear, accurate and verified information about a product’s sustainability credentials.

For a more detailed overview on sustainability legislation, please see the 2026 SATRA Bulletin Sustainability Special.

Product carbon footprint and lifecycle assessment

Until recently, any organisation looking to measure the environmental impacts of a product is likely to have used international standards, the most relevant of these being ISO 14067:2018 for product carbon footprints and ISO 14040:2006+A1:2020 and ISO 14044:2006+A2:2020 for lifecycle assessments (LCAs). These standards provide a clear framework and methodology for calculating, reporting and communicating environmental impacts.

A product carbon footprint or an LCA has four stages: i) goal and scope definition, ii) data collection and validation (inventory), iii) impact assessment and, finally, iv) interpretation and feedback.

The initial ‘goal and scope definition’ stage will determine the ‘functional unit’ of the study – such as a pair of finished shoes in a given size delivered to the end consumer. The ‘system boundaries’ will also be defined, which means what is included in or excluded from the study. For instance, raw materials will be included, but it may be reasonable to exclude any environmental impacts incurred in constructing the production site. The impact of building the production site per pair of shoes made over the anticipated life of the factory is likely to be negligible.

It will also be determined if the study is ‘cradle to gate’ or ‘cradle to grave’. All decisions made in relation to the study must be documented and justification be provided.

During the ‘data collection and validation’ stage, the organisation will need to collect primary data and source secondary data. Primary data is specific to the product and supply chain being studied, whereas secondary data is used to convert the primary data into an environmental impact. As an example, the weight of a material (primary data) is multiplied by an impact value (secondary data) to calculate the environmental impact of that material.

The ‘impact assessment’ stage involves calculating the carbon footprint (or other environmental impacts) of the product using all the data collected.

The final stage is ‘interpretation and feedback’. This involves checking that the results are consistent and complete, and identifies relevant conclusions and recommendations from the study in line with its goal and scope.

The ‘impact assessment’ stage involves calculating the carbon footprint (or other environmental impacts) of the product using all the data collected.

The final stage is ‘interpretation and feedback’. This involves checking that the results are consistent and complete, and identifies relevant conclusions and recommendations from the study in line with its goal and scope.

Challenges and considerations

Organisations working to measure the impacts of their products are likely to face a series of challenges. For the footwear industry, one of the biggest challenges is the availability of secondary impact data. The data for some materials (a good example being leather) may be based on a small number of studies in a particular location. That data is not likely to be representative of the wider industry and the prevailing technologies being used, and certainly not the actual material or product being studied. As a result of this, many tanneries have started to commission their own independent LCA studies.

For materials that have been developed to have a lower environmental impact, data may not be available in standard databases and may need to be sourced directly from the manufacturers. In addition, data may not be available for other items from a specific country or region, and global average or aggregate data may have to be used instead.

Another challenge is that studies conducted by different companies may not be directly comparable. For instance, one company may complete a study using a cradle-to-gate approach and another company may use a cradle-to-gate methodology. This could mean that there are very different results for what could actually be very similar products using very similar supply chains.

Alternative approaches

In order to tackle some of the challenges mentioned above, alternative approaches have been developed from the original ISO standards. These are intended to provide product-specific frameworks and to ensure that results from different studies can be compared with confidence.

The European Union has been working on a number of ‘Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules’ (PEFCRs), including one for apparel and footwear. A PEFCR is a set of product-specific rules that explain how to calculate the environmental footprint for a particular product category. It is based on the EU’s Product Environmental Footprint Lifecycle method for measuring environmental impacts. The PEFCR has rules for: i) ‘functional unit’ – for example, one pair of shoes worn for x number of years, ii) ‘system boundaries’ – what is included in or excluded from the study, iii) ‘data requirements’ – when primary versus secondary data should be used and data quality rules; secondary datasets also being provided, and iv) ‘impact categories’ to be reported – such as climate change, water use and toxicity.

The apparel and footwear PEFCR also considers aspects of a product, including its durability and repairability. However, it is fair to say that there is not widespread consensus about how these are measured.

Another approach based on LCA methodologies is an ‘Environmental Product Declaration’ (EPD). This also has product specific guidelines to follow (called ‘Product Category Rules’), which are published by EPD programme operators. An LCA is then used as a basis to produce a final EPD report using a pre-defined template. A crucial part of the EPD process is that all EPDs have to be verified by an independent third party before being published.

As all EPDs for a particular product type are created using the same rules and are independently verified, anyone looking at the results can be confident that they are comparing like-for-like. The use of EPDs is not currently widespread in the footwear and apparel sector, but they are the ‘go-to’ approach in construction, furniture production and other sectors. They tend to be used to communicate information between companies, rather than to consumers.

The French ‘Écobalyse’ online tool has recently been introduced to allow anyone to calculate an environmental score an item of clothing, although it does not currently include footwear in its scope. The tool can be used to specify a product – for example, the weight of each material used, where the item is produced and how it is transported – to generate a simple score that consumers can understand.

The future

The direction of travel is clear – organisations will need to understand the environmental impacts of their products and communicate this information to their consumers. While the EU intends that the PEFCR will be the mechanism to calculate the environmental impacts of footwear, it is likely that alternative approaches will continue. There is likely to be a need for simpler tools and processes, such as Écobalyse, to support measuring the impacts of a large number of products.

Publishing Data

This article was originally published on page 15 of the February 2026 issue of SATRA Bulletin.

Other articles from this issue »

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