You've created a comparison with inventory products or scenario products. But you see outcomes that you don't understand.
It might be that a product has extremely higher or lower eco costs/carbon footprint results than the other product(s).
Or, it might be that you simply see results you did not expect or understand.
There are a couple of things you can do to find the answers.
Usually, it comes down to missing input data, or lack of hotspot analysis. Let's dive in.
Tip #1. Check for any unspecified values in your products.
Sometimes impact differences between products can be quite extreme (e.g. 135% worse eco costs).
Usually, this means you forgot to fill out a value in te product form and Pickler applied the component's 'unspecified value'. This is a worst-case impact scenario for energy use in a production process or transport distance, to ensure you can't (accidentally) greenwash by not filling out details.
For example, the unspecified value for missing transport distances is 21.000 km.
Summary: Make sure all unspecified values - are specified. Usually, this solves most of the extreme impact differences in comparisons.
Tip #2. Check if you filled out all production processes.
Make sure you filled out the production process for every material you listed in your Bill of Materials section.
Sometimes users add multiple materials but forget to add the corresponding production processes. If you compare this product to a product where all production processes have been filled out - you don't show the complete picture. Often resulting in varying results you can't really explain.
Summary: Always check if you don't miss any production processes for the products you're comparing. This ensures your comparison results are more complete, and therefore, easier to understand and explain to clients.
Tip #3. Analyze the impact hotspots (impactful life cycle stages or materials).
Pickler's goal as an independent software party, is to debunk any gut feelings regarding what's sustainable or not - with ISO-certified, peer-reviewed, up-to-date, and unbiased market average scientific studies.
Sometimes you see results you don't understand yet or thought would be different. In that case, it's important to look at every phase in the product life cycle and see where the impact is actually coming from (so-called impact hotspots).
It might be that a product you're comparing to was produced closer to home (say - Germany), but has a different material mix, production process, or transport type - causing it to be more impactful than the product you purchased from further away (say Turkey).
Summary: Always look at the product's entire life cycle impact to understand where impact differences come from. Which life cycle stage, or material causes the biggest impact?
Tip #4. Check the Idemat sources.
It might also be that a certain material you thought would be less impactful, has a higher market average impact. Often, this is because:
The market average energy consumption in production processes is high;
The energy type used in production is not very clean (yet) on average;
The market-average EOL scenario is less favorable than you thought.
In that case, you can view the sources used by clicking on the 'i' icons in your comparison, product form, or product impact reports. This brings you to the LCAs used and explains the rules and credits for EOL scenarios.
If you have any questions about Idemat sources, you can reach out to Sustainability Impact Metrics.
Tip #5. Analyze the EOL credits based on your BOM
It might be that EOL impact is lower for one product than the other - and this surprises you.
Often this is the result of:
EOL credits for incineration due to electricity generation; (click on the 'i' icon for a full explanation')
EOL credits because you used recycled materials as input.
*Please note, Pickler does not offer credits for recycling at the EOL as we count recycling input in our system boundaries. Read more about recycling in Pickler here.