Sustainability Assessment

EY denkstatt specializes in environmental assessments for whole companies and also for specific products and services. Whether you want to identify opportunities for more sustainable production or communicate your performance to stakeholders – sustainability assessment is a requisite for your ESG management.

Get a clear picture of your status quo

Know your baseline to derive feasible sustainability measures.

What is a sustainability assessment?

Sustainability analysis estimates the environmental, social and economic performance of a company, product or service and evaluates its impacts on nature, society, and the economy. In this case the three pillars, environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) would be combined. Which method to choose or whether a combined set of methods makes sense for your impact evaluation depends on the subject, the goal and scope definition, and system boundaries.

Why assess your environmental impact?

The results of the impact assessment serve as a basis for improving your ESG (Environmental Social and Governance) performance. By identifying the critical points in your product life cycle or business operations, you can define measures for e.g. process optimization, emission reduction, or eco design and hence head toward more sustainable business practices. Additionally, a sustainability assessment provides you with important information for your ESG reporting and communication to stakeholders.

How your business can benefit

Our sustainability assessment services

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)

Determine your product’s environmental impacts as well as opportunities for improvement
An LCA identifies the total environmental impacts caused directly and indirectly by a product during its entire life cycle, expressing them in impact categories such as climate change, eutrophication potential or human toxicity. In this regard, an LCA looks beyond a carbon footprint and serves as a more holistic impact analysis.
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Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF)

Find out about the GHG emissions produced by your company’s operations
The CCF describes the total amount of greenhouse gases produced directly and indirectly through a company’s operations and activities. It is the ideal tool to detect inefficiencies, communicate your improvement efforts, set targets and optimize the climate performance of your organization.
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Product life cycle analyses:
PEF, PCF, EPD

Aim for sustainable products by using other specific analyses throughout the different product stages
Based on the Life Cycle Analysis method, there are more specified analyses for a product life cycle available:

-The PCF (Product Carbon Footprint) assesses only the impacts of a product on climate change.

-The EPD (Environmental Product Declaration) and PEF (Product Environmental Footprint) methods are more specified in terms of guidelines and follow additional rules to receive comparable results.

Water footprint

Calculate the amount of water used during a product’s manufacturing and supply chain
The water footprint of a product is the volume of freshwater used to produce a product during its whole supply chain. It shows water consumption volumes (evaporation or incorporation in the product) by source and polluted volumes by type of pollution. To learn more about our water-related services, here you can find.
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Reach out to our expert to find a solution that suits your company!

Iris Kral

Associate Manager & International Service Lead Sustainability Assessment

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions on sustainability assessments

A sustainability assessment serves as an evaluation of the sustainability performance of a company, product or service. It analyzes the environmental, social, and economic impacts that a company may cause during all its business operations. In the case of a product, the whole life cycle and environmental impacts of the different product stages are assessed. Contrary to the carbon footprint, not only GHG emissions are considered but also other factors like all types of pollution, resource consumption or waste.

There are different methods to assess sustainability performance. Which method to choose depends on whether a whole company or a product is evaluated as well as other factors. Tools include the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), the carbon footprint, water footprint, Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) or Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), for example.

In comparison to the Product Carbon Footprint, LCA is a more holistic ecological assessment considering a number of the environmental impacts of the different product stages. A carbon footprint calculates a product’s GHG emissions and assesses its performance in terms of climate change only, while LCA takes many ecological effects like ocean acidification, human toxicity or land use into account.

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