The Path to Scale: Taking the Next Step in LCA and PCF at Scale
How to move towards repeatable product footprinting that supports customers, decarbonisation, and better business decisions
6 November 2026
Webinar
Table of Contents
- Start with the problem you are trying to solve
- Build a repeatable process before automating it
- Use broader coverage to support better decisions
- A practical path to LCA-at-Scale
- From more footprints to more useful information and quicker decisions
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Demand for product-level environmental data is changing how organisations use Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Customer requests for Product Carbon Footprints (PCFs) are becoming more common and leverage LCA-based methodologies. This product-level information can also support regulatory requirements, Scope 3 reporting, product design, and decarbonisation decisions.
Meeting these needs through individual LCA and PCF projects can quickly become time- and cost-prohibitive. Each assessment requires data, modelling decisions, quality checks, and specialist expertise, and applying the same level of effort separately to hundreds or thousands of products is unlikely to be practical.
Scaling LCA and PCF requires a different approach: common data, consistent methods, digital workflows, and automation that reduces the work required for each additional assessment. While digital-enablement unlocks the ability to scale assessments, technology is only part of the picture. The underlying method, data, expertise, and ownership still determine whether the resulting footprints are credible and capture the full business value of your efforts.
These themes were explored during our recent LCA-at-Scale webinar with Seagate. Seagate’s experience offers useful lessons for organisations considering how to expand product footprinting beyond a small number of individual assessments.
Start with the problem you are trying to solve
For many organisations, the immediate trigger for a PCF is a customer request. But the same product-level data can help to solve numerous challenges, including:
- Responding to customer requests for product environmental information
- Preparing for regulatory and reporting requirements
- Improving the product-level information available for your own Scope 3 emissions
- Identifying materials, components, or processes driving environmental impacts
- Assessing product design, material, and supplier impacts
- Comparing potential decarbonisation scenarios before investing in product re-design
The intended use matters because it determines how you may need to approach your assessment. A PCF produced to answer an immediate customer request may require a different level of detail from an assessment used to support a comparative environmental claim or a detailed product redesign.
Before choosing a tool or designing a large programme, organisations should ask a more basic question: what decisions or disclosures need to be supported by the resulting product information?
The answer to this question provides a clearer basis for deciding where to begin and how much detail is justified. Rather than focus on future proofing your assessment programme, aim to address your current needs. A well-designed programme should be built to grow alongside your needs and, regardless of the approach you need to take, getting started with data you have available is always a good first step.
Use the data already available
Many organisations already hold useful information in bills of materials, product specifications, product compliance information, Enterprise Resource Planning systems, purchasing records, supplier information, and corporate greenhouse gas inventories. Secondary datasets can be used where primary information is unavailable, if data sources, assumptions, and limitations are clearly understood.
There will always be data gaps, but progress can be made even with imperfect data, and that work can also help to identify which gaps matter. Once initial footprints have been calculated, organisations can see which materials, components, suppliers, or processes have the greatest influence on results. Data improvement can then focus on those areas rather than trying to improve everything at once.
Build a repeatable process before automating it
Scaling becomes possible when modelling decisions and data can be reused across products.
Common system boundaries, consistent modelling rules, agreed approaches for data gaps, and reusable data can reduce the number of decisions that have to be made from scratch for each assessment. Digital workflows can then handle more of the repetitive work involved in processing data, mapping it to appropriate datasets, and rerunning calculations.
Seagate’s experience illustrates how this capability can develop over time. During the webinar, Seagate described how its early LCAs could take around six months to complete. Its approach subsequently developed through more consistent methods, supplier Full Material Disclosure (FMD), manufacturing information, greenhouse gas inventory data, and digital enablement.
The useful lesson is the sequence. Automation becomes far more effective once there is a defined process to automate.
Keep LCA and product expertise focused on the decisions that matter
Digital tools can take on repetitive work, particularly where organisations need to process large bills of materials or apply the same modelling approach across many related products. In-house or external LCA and product teams can then spend more time on areas that require judgement, like how the data will inform decision-making or more nuanced technical decisions, including functional units, proxy selection, data gaps, comparability, quality assurance, and interpretation.
Clear ownership is equally important. Products change, suppliers change, datasets are updated, and customer requirements evolve. A scaled programme therefore needs people responsible for product data, methodology, quality, and updates.
Those capabilities do not all need to sit within one team. Internal product and data owners can work alongside LCA specialists and digital tools. What matters is that responsibilities are clear and that the underlying data and modelling choices remain accessible, repeatable, and explainable.
Use broader coverage to support better decisions
The immediate benefit of scaling may be the ability to respond to more customer requests at a manageable cost. Broader product coverage also creates other opportunities.
Instead of examining one footprint at a time, organisations can compare results across product families or entire portfolios, look for common hotspots, and identify where changes are likely to have the greatest environmental improvement and business value.
Seagate discussed several examples during the webinar, including assessing the product-level effects of renewable electricity, changes to manufacturing chemicals with high global warming potential, and increased recycled content. In one case, analysis of increased recycled steel content indicated that the product-level environmental benefit did not support the additional cost.
That is an important use of LCA: not simply demonstrating environmental benefit, but also providing evidence to help determine whether a potential intervention is worth pursuing. Environmental initiatives compete for investment like other business priorities. Product-level evidence can help teams understand which interventions are likely to produce meaningful improvements and where resources may be better spent elsewhere.
This is also where product footprinting begins to connect directly to business value. Anthesis’ ROI² approach evaluates sustainability opportunities through two complementary lenses: environmental impact and business return. At portfolio scale, LCA can provide supporting evidence for those decisions, helping organisations assess not only which interventions reduce impacts, but which are most likely to align with cost reduction, supplier engagement, product strategy, customer requirements, risk management, or competitive advantage. Rather than asking only ‘Where are the impacts?’, organisations can increasingly ask ‘Which actions create the greatest overall value?’
As the underlying models become easier to update, this information can also be used earlier. Changes to product, supplier, or manufacturing data can be tested without rebuilding an assessment from the beginning, helping teams assess options while decisions are still being made.
A practical path to LCA-at-Scale
- Define the need. What customer request, regulatory requirement, sustainability objective, or business decision needs product-level information?
- Assess the data already available. What can be drawn from existing product, supplier, manufacturing, and corporate systems?
- Identify what can be reused. Which modelling rules, assumptions, datasets, and calculations can be standardised across products?
- Set clear ownership. Who is responsible for product data, LCA methodology, quality assurance, and ongoing updates?
- Automate repeatable tasks. Use digital tools where they can reduce manual processing without removing necessary quality controls.
- Use results to prioritise improvement. Look across products for hotspots and use the findings to focus product, supplier, and decarbonisation work.
- Improve the programme over time. Use what is learned from each round of assessments and decisions to target the next data and model improvements.
From more footprints to more useful information and quicker decisions
LCA/PCF-at-Scale can make product footprinting practical across a much larger share of a portfolio. The number of assessments produced is only one measure of progress.
The greater opportunity is to build a product sustainability data capability that can answer customer requests while also helping teams understand products, evaluate changes, engage suppliers, and identify where investment can deliver the greatest environmental and business value. As organisations mature their product footprint capabilities, the focus increasingly shifts from producing assessments to using product-level evidence to support better decisions, stronger business cases, and more effective decarbonisation strategies.
For organisations starting this journey, the first step does not need to be a fully automated end state. A focused use case, available data, and a consistent method can provide the foundation. Digital workflows allow you to quickly and consistently build on that foundation and, from there, coverage and capability can grow as the business need develops.
Anthesis helps organisations develop and scale LCA and PCF programmes, from assessing data readiness and defining consistent methodologies through to digital workflows, portfolio analysis, and decarbonisation planning. To discuss where your organisation is today, and what a practical path to broader product coverage could look like, contact us.
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