Methodology and impact data FAQ

The carbon footprint shows the total amount of greenhouse gases a product emits during its life cycle, converted into CO₂-equivalents, so different gases can be compared fairly. In short, it answers the question: How much do we emit?
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The climate change impact category in Pickler’s eco-cost model looks beyond the amount of emissions and assesses their actual effect on the environment. It translates those emissions into eco-costs — an economic estimate of what it would cost society to prevent or repair the climate damage caused by the emitted greenhouse gases. This helps companies understand the broader environmental burden of their footprint, not just the quantity of gases released.

So, carbon footprint measures the emissions, while climate change impact measures what those emissions do.

End-of-life emissions can be negative when waste incineration produces electricity that replaces more polluting energy sources. In Western Europe, waste facilities often use the heat from burning materials to generate electricity. If that electricity avoids the need to produce power from coal or gas, the system receives a credit for the avoided emissions. For example, burning paper releases less CO₂ than producing the same amount of electricity from fossil fuels, so the net effect becomes negative. Fossil-based plastics often don’t generate this benefit because their own combustion emissions are higher.

This approach is called system expansion (ISO 14044 §4.3.3.1) and accounts for both the impacts of burning the material and the benefits of the electricity it produces. Whether the outcome is negative depends on factors like the material’s energy content, the local electricity mix, the efficiency of the plant, and whether the carbon is biogenic (short-cycle) or fossil-based (long-cycle). Pickler uses European average energy data from IDEMAT to calculate these credits.

The difference between recyclability and the recycling rate comes down to what could happen versus what actually happens at the end of a product's life.

Recyclability refers to the potential for a product or material to be recycled under ideal conditions. This means that the material is technically capable of being recycled, provided it is disposed of correctly and there is the proper recycling infrastructure available.

For example, many plastic products are labeled as recyclable, but whether they actually get recycled depends on whether the necessary facilities exist in the area where they are used.

On the other hand, the recycling rate is the percentage of a product or material that is actually collected, processed, and recycled. It measures the real-world effectiveness of recycling systems and consumer behavior. Even if a product is 100% recyclable, the recycling rate may be much lower due to factors like poor collection, inadequate sorting, or a lack of local recycling facilities.

In Pickler, the recycling rate is used. At this moment, the recyclability of a product is not assessed.

In summary, a claim about recyclability speaks to the potential of a product to be recycled, while the recycling rate reveals how often that potential is realized in practice. It’s important to distinguish between these two to avoid misleading claims about sustainability.

Ecoinvent is a widely used and academically robust LCI database. Its strength lies in its suitability for research and policy-level modeling, but its conservative assumptions and slower update cycle can make it less suitable for practical, day-to-day product comparisons.

Pickler therefore uses IDEMAT as its default background database, because it:

Ecoinvent remains a highly respected database, but for a product-focused tool like Pickler, IDEMAT is the better fit.