What is the environmental impact of a product?
What is the environmental impact of a product? How is it measured? Which indicators are used?
Adrien Esnault
September 16, 2021
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What is the environmental impact of a product? How is it measured? Which indicators are used?
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The concept of environmental impact refers to all modifications to the environment (qualitative, quantitative and functional, whether negative or positive) engendered by a project, process, organization or product over its entire life cycle, from design to end-of-life. No product can be impact-free. Every action, every stage of manufacture, production, transport and use has a direct or indirect impact on our planet.
The UN has understood this and made it one of its priorities. In 2015, UN member states committed to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It encompasses 17 Sustainable Development Goals and clear guidelines for slowing global warming.
This approach to measuring, analyzing and understanding the environmental impact of its products is part of a responsible approach.
An environmental impact is measured using impact indicators. These indicators are scientific quantities that can be measured, enabling us to rigorously quantify each category of environmental impact. These indicators enable us to work on the basis of concrete, analyzable results to implement impact reduction strategies such as eco-design.
At Waro, we use our results to show the impact of a product on several impact indicators, such as water consumption, damage to biodiversity, depletion of natural resources and greenhouse gas emissions. This provides a comprehensive overview of a product's environmental impact on ecosystems. Indeed, an impact analysis based on a single indicator could lead to erroneous or counter-productive conclusions.
💡 Let's take cotton as an example: using this raw material to make a T-shirt reduces the amount of CO2eq emitted compared to other synthetic textile materials. However, this reduction comes at the expense of a very sharp rise in water consumption.
That's why Waro's analyses are not limited solely to global warming and CO2eq emissions. Depending on the sector, analysis of 3 to 4 indicators is recommended to best assess a product's environmental impact.
We identify 4 categories of environment impacted by human activities: air, water, soil and health. Each ecosystem is covered by several indicators. You will find below their description and the main human activities responsible for these impacts, as defined by ADEME.
The greenhouse effect is the increase in the average temperature of the atmosphere induced by an increase in the concentration of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
The main greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide (CO2), water vapor, methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and hydrofluorocarbons.
Air acidification is linked to emissions of nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, ammonia and hydrochloric acid. These pollutants transform into acids in the presence of humidity, and their fallout can damage both ecosystems and buildings.
Nitrogen oxides come mainly from fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes. Sulfur oxide emissions are due to the use of fossil fuels containing sulfur: coal, lignite, petroleum coke, fuel oil and diesel. Ammonia comes largely from the agricultural sector. Hydrochloric acid is produced in particular by the combustion of chlorinated fossil fuels (coal, heavy fuel oil) and the incineration of household waste.
Ground-level ozone is formed in the lower atmosphere from volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and nitrogen oxides under the effect of solar radiation. Ozone is a very powerful oxidant known to have health effects, as it penetrates easily to the respiratory tract.
There are many sources of VOCs, from the evaporation of solvents in paints, inks and glues to the burning of wood in household equipment.
Ozone depletion is the result of complex reactions between the ozone present in the upper atmosphere and gaseous compounds such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), halons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs). Natural filtration of ultraviolet radiation becomes less effective, leading to potentially harmful effects on human health, animal health and terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.
CFCs are mainly used in the refrigeration, foam, industrial cleaning and propellant industries. They are now banned and replaced by HCFCs as refrigerant gases and propellants in aerosols.
The presence of small-diameter fine particles in the air - particularly those smaller than 10 microns in diameter - is a major human health issue, as their inhalation can cause respiratory and cardiovascular problems.
These particles come mainly from the combustion of various resources for energy purposes (wood, coal, oil), road transport and industry.
Eutrophication of an aqueous environment is characterized by the introduction of nutrients, in the form of nitrogen and phosphate compounds, leading to the development or even proliferation of algae and asphyxiation of the environment.
Eutrophication of fresh waters is mainly due to phosphate compounds. The input of phosphates into the natural environment comes from agriculture (use of fertilizers, animal waste), industrial waste and domestic waste (human waste, detergents and washing powder).
Eutrophication of marine waters is caused by the introduction of nutrients in the form of nitrogen compounds, leading to algal blooms and environmental asphyxia. Various nitrogen compounds are involved in this phenomenon: nitrates, nitrites, ammoniacal nitrogen and organic nitrogen.
Agricultural activities - both crop and livestock - as well as industrial and domestic activities (e.g. wastewater) contribute to these inputs of nitrogenous nutrients into the environment.
Human activities can involve the use of products and preparations that can reach aquatic ecosystems and prove toxic to their flora and fauna.
Some products consumed by households can have ecotoxic effects on aquatic environments: shampoos, hygiene products and household detergents, for example.
In lifecycle analysis, this flow indicator is equivalent to considering water withdrawals directly from natural freshwater reserves (e.g. river, lake, groundwater) or saltwater reserves.
Primary energy is the amount of energy contained in natural resources (crude oil, natural gas, solar radiation, water for hydropower, etc.) in their raw state. Primary energy can be of non-renewable or renewable origin. This energy cannot be used directly. Only so-called secondary energies are, such as electricity, heating oil, etc.). To make these primary energies available to a user, they have to be extracted, transformed, stored, distributed and so on.
This indicator reflects the depletion of the environment's non-renewable mineral and fossil resources, such as iron, zinc, natural gas, coal and oil. It is a major indicator in economic and energy forecasting, and in the implementation of policies designed to promote renewable energies.
This indicator takes into account the loss of habitat available to living species, caused by the occupation of land by human activities (agriculture, forestry and deforestation, transport networks, urbanization, etc.). This loss is considered to lead ultimately to a reduction in biodiversity.
Many human activities require the use of substances that can be emitted into the atmosphere and the environment. All these activities can be potentially dangerous to human health if inhaled or ingested. For example, they can be carcinogenic.
This applies to many industrial and energy activities (steel mills, nuclear power plants, coal-fired power stations) as well as chemical-based activities.
Measuring impacts is one of the key steps in preparing and deploying a CSR strategy. The LCA method to prepare your environmental display
To implement an eco-design strategy for your products
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