Hidden environmental costs
Eco-costs are environmental costs that are not yet reflected in the market price of a product. Together with a sales price, they would form a product's "true costs". Eco costs function as:
Impact KPI: They measure the total environmental impact of a product expressed in €. Functioning as a sustainability KPI that should be reduced and enables comparison with eco costs from other packaging.
Prevention costs: Show the cost we'd need to make to invest in impact reduction and technical prevention measures.
The goal of eco-costs is to reduce pollution and depletion of resources to sustainable levels that align with the Earth's carrying capacity.
Pickler is designed to help the packaging industry calculate, compare, and lower the eco-costs of its packaging. Supporting the transition towards a more sustainable future.
Read how eco costs are calculated here.
For example;
Many large production facilities for paper, plastics, and metals are part of the EU Emissions Trading System since they are top polluters in Europe. Each year the emitted emissions of these companies need to be reduced until the -55% reduction is met in 2030 (Green Deal Target).
Therefore, these companies need to implement countermeasures. If they are not able to do so, they can buy expensive ETS credits.
Both countermeasures and ETS credits will reflect an increased cost of packaging. These costs are now still hidden - and we call them eco-costs.
How does Pickler incorporate eco costs?
Compare products with eco costs
Pickler enables you to compare the total environmental impact of products with the comparison feature via eco costs. Comparing the eco costs of packaging helps:
Built impact reduction cases, by comparing products or portfolios with less impactful alternatives in your offering.
Empower customers to weigh both sales prices and eco costs in considering a purchase.
Additionally, you can create scenarios with the scenario feature. This enables you to:
Create impact reduction scenarios for customers by switching processes, materials, or transport distances and seeing how these changes reflect in the total impact.