FOOTPRINTCALC - Free product footprint calculator

FOOTPRINTCALC is a free product footprint calculator. Measure and improve the environmental impact of your products.
FootprintCalc's detailed results
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Before you start

FOOTPRINTCALC provides a quick and efficient way to calculate a carbon footprint or life cycle assessment. However, a basic understanding of life cycle assessment is required for understanding what data needs to be input and how the results must be interpreted. An introduction to performing an LCA can be found on the website of Sustainability Impact Metrics, the author of the database included in FOOTPRINTCALC. An alternative is studying the freely accesible guidance provided by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol product standard.

Sustainability claims are increasingly coming under scrutiny. FOOTPRINTCALC is a great tool for performing hotspot analyses and LCA screenings for internal use. If you want to communicate your results to external stakeholders, an independent review of the results, assumptions, and calculations can be required by different normative frameworks such as the GHG protocol or the ISO 14040 family.
Lifecycle analysis

Features

Includes database

FOOTPRINTCALC includes the open access Idemat 2023 Rev A database developed at Delft University of Technology. The database contains impact factors for around 900 materials, 80 production processes, electricity country mixes, transport, and over 200 end-of-life treatments. The database also allows for calculating eco-costs, a measure to express the costs of preventing eco-burdens. Additional open access environmental databases can be found at FOOTPRINTDATA.org
A carbon footprint calculated with FootprintCalc

Easy to use

FootprintCalc's interface
By using drop-down menu's you can easily select impact factors to calculate environmental impact. If an impact factor cannot be found in the database you can include your own custom impact factors.

Great insights

The results of the calculations are displayed per life cycle stage and include detailed breakdowns of eco-costs. Furthermore, FOOTPRINTCALC also shows you the top 5 processes that contribute the most to the environmental impact of your product, allowing for a quick hot-spot analysis.
FootprintCalc's detailed results

Scenario editor

FootprintCalc's detailed results
FOOTPRINTCALC has a dedicated module for calculating design scenarios. This allows you to readily ascertain what the reduction potential is of design scenarios such as using recycled materials, changing production methods, or adopting circular business models.

Tutorial

Below you can find a video tutorial for FOOTPRINTCALC. The video explains how to model a product in the calculator, as well as how to use the design scenario module (starting at 15:00). The video is hosted on Vimeo and does not track and/or use cookies.

Download

FOOTPRINTCALC is really free and open access in line with our mission to contribute to the availability of open source sustainability data. We do not collect any data and you are not required to hand over your e-mail address to download the calculator.

FOOTPRINTCALC only works in Excel 365. The online and mobile versions of Excel 365 can be used for free. It is is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0). The tool is provided at no cost, but it does have conditions for use. It is therefore required to agree to the end-user license agreement to use the calculator.

Support

FOOTPRINTCALC is developed by The Footprinters, because we want to help as many people as possible in making their products more sustainable. We are a two-person sustainability consultancy located in The Netherlands. If you are interested in using FootprintCalc in your organisation but need some help getting started we have developed an in-house training. Please get in contact with us via contact@thefootprinters.nl to discuss possibilities and pricing.

Version history

Version 1.0 (April 2023). First version released.
Version 1.1 (October 2023). Updated to Idemat 2023RevA database. Fixed small bugs (scenario editor, product name not showing in results).