Materials already include location and production
When working with LCA in Pickler, it’s common to wonder whether you should define where a material comes from, for example, the transport from the raw material source to the production facility, or the energy used at that location.
In practice, this is not something you enter separately. In LCA, a material is not just a substance , it represents a complete production system.
When you select a material like PET, cardboard, or aluminum, you are using a dataset from IDEMAT that already includes how that material is typically produced in the real world.
This covers raw material extraction, transport to processing facilities, and conversion into a usable material. It also reflects the location where this production usually takes place, including the corresponding energy mix.
Why location is already accounted for
Location has a major impact on environmental results. The carbon intensity of energy differs significantly between regions, and transport distances from extraction to processing are part of the system as well.
Instead of asking users to define all of this manually, which is often unknown and complex, LCA datasets include representative, real-world averages. This ensures that each material is modeled consistently and realistically.
How Pickler applies this
Pickler follows this standard LCA approach. Materials are treated as complete, predefined systems, and the focus is on the parts of the lifecycle that actually differ per product, such as packaging design, downstream transport, and end-of-life.
In short
The location, energy use, and transport involved in producing a material are already built into the material data. Defining them separately would make results inconsistent and less accurate.