Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) - Carbon Impact Methodology

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Let’s Make a Bigger Difference Together

We are using a robust methodology that allows us to measure and analyze the life cycle phases of our products and assess the carbon impacts of each phase – from the sourcing of raw materials to the products’ end-of-life.

Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) helps us measure and continually improve our carbon impacts, but that’s not all. By sharing the carbon footprint on product labels, it will also help consumers to make informed decisions to reduce their personal footprint by choosing lower impact products.

When carbon labelling becomes mainstream and part of everyday life, like calories on nutrition labels, it brings clarity to the climate impact of purchasing decisions. That’s why we are open-sourcing our methodology to interested companies.

Methodology Overview

LCA sits at the heart of our comprehensive approach. We have developed a multi-step, third-party verified methodology.

Did you know

Our methodology is third-party certified to international good practice standards ISO 14067 and ISO 14026.

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Phase 1

Sourcing and Manufacturing

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Phase 2

Transportation and Storage

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Phase 3

In-Use

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Phase 4

End of Life

There are four key phases to the LCA: sourcing and manufacturing, transportation and storage, in-use and end-of-life. Each of these phases comes with its own set of unique focus areas and challenges that will shape the final carbon impact of a product.

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Phase 1

There are three main focus areas in this phase: 1 Raw Materials; 2 Production; and 3 Assembly. Let’s take a closer look...

SOURCING AND MANUFACTURING

For this phase, we measure the impact of raw material extraction and manufacturing. From manufacture of constituent parts, right through to assembly, everything is considered. We work with suppliers to gather insights into the manufacturing process to create a clear picture of impacts during this phase.

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Phase 2

This phase covers everything involved in getting a product from the factory into your hands.

TRANSPORTATION AND STORAGE

Once we have the final product tested, boxed and ready for use we have to get it to the consumer — a journey that we measure from beginning to end.

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Phase 3

Our scenarios help us to predict consumption in this phase, but the impact is in your hands!

IN-USE

Our products use energy while in use. Since we can't assess exactly how our products are being used by customers, we measure the electricity consumption according to specific use-case scenarios we developed based on consumer feedback. We include best and worst case estimations during the life of a product and the energy demand of the host systems, such as a computer, utilizing our products. We account for the additional carbon impacts associated with replacement batteries used during the life of the product.

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Phase 4

This phase covers the end of a product's life, including retrieving and recycling products wherever possible.

End-of-Life

There are lots of factors to consider in the end-of-life phase. We start with assessing the transportation used to collect end-of-life products, packaging, batteries, and getting these items from the end user to treatment sites.

We then look at how each of these items are handled, measuring the impacts of how packaging is treated, how products and their accessories are dealt with and what happens to batteries and their disposal. We also assess the preparation phase (e.g., sorting) where items are being made good and ready for incineration, landfill or initiatives such as thermal energy recovery.

This is all before we get to recycling where, at a basic level, we look at sorting and shredding. But we go much further than that. We review our global networks and look at local recycling infrastructure and capability and make worst-case scenario assumptions recognizing there are challenges associated with the recycling of small consumer electronics.

But for us to do our best to reuse, repair and extend their life, we need your help. We can only work with products that you return to us, so please recycle your devices whenever possible.

Carbon Calculator And Third-Party Verification

To calculate the final carbon footprint of a product, we use a Life Cycle Assessment software called Umberto, leveraging a combination of published datasets from GaBi and Ecoinvent together with custom LCA models developed using primary data. To support the integrity of the carbon calculations, we are working with internationally recognised LCA experts in the iPoint Group together with an independent verifier to critically verify and validate product-level carbon impacts to DEKRA certification standards.

Our Partners

Our LCA methodology has been a long time in the making. It has taken a huge effort and true team spirit at Logitech to turn our carbon vision into a reality. We still have a long way to go to achieve the level of transparency and accuracy that we aspire to but we’ll get there. Our success to date has been made possible through our partners, working with IFU Hamburg (part of the iPoint Group) to help us develop the lifecycle models to create numbers with meaning and DEKRA ensuring that whatever the number says, it has been accredited and verified to ISO14067 and ISO14026 standards.

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