Resource description:
Raw material extraction drives half of global greenhouse gas emissions and up to 90% of biodiversity loss, while linear business models continue to waste valuable resources. Because product design determines up to 80% of life-cycle impacts, integrating biodiversity footprinting into ecodesign strategies is essential to reducing nature related risks, improving resource efficiency, and creating long-term business value. This is true whether your company is responding to biodiversity reporting requirements, seeking market opportunities in sustainable products, or aligning with global or EU nature-related goals.
This primer therefore focuses on applying life-cycle assessment ( LCA ) to two core business needs : product improvement and stakeholder communications. For product improvement, an LCA – and biodiversity and ecosystem footprinting in particular – helps identify nature-related hotspots across product life cycles and supply chains, enabling you to evaluate and select the most effective ecodesign strategies to reduce nature related impacts and develop more resilient, future-fit products. For stakeholder communications, it provides the credible, science-based foundation needed to articulate your organisation’s nature performance to investors, customers and other audiences.
This primer helps your company answer practical questions that guide day-to-day business decisions :
- Which materials your company sources and from where
- What the focus of your operations is and what transformations along the supply chain you are responsible for
- Why you should apply a nature lens to the ecodesign of products and how to do it.
Author/Contact:
Lead author/s : Marina Isasa ( Tecnalia ) ; Rafael Horn ( Fraunhofer ) ; Sharon Stauffert, Andreas Gess ( University of Stuttgart ).
With thanks for the contributions : Christian Bauer ( SIG Group ) ; Bianca Nijhof ; Caroline de Zutter ( Engie ) ; Leticia Guimaraes ( Vale ) ; Nadine McCormick, Amanda Griniece, Karina Mereuta ( WBCSD ) ; Marco Bianchi, Raul Ugarte, Jorge Ortigosa ( Tecnalia ) ; Guy Duke, Judit Planas, Rosimeiry Portela ( Capitals Coalition ) ; Jonathan Porter ( Oppla ) ; Harry Greenfiled ( CISL ).
Design & layout : Matthew Brown ( Oppla )