“LCA's are massively complicated, expensive reports, which often take a lot of time to produce accurately.” — as seen on Reddit
You want to measure and reduce your product’s environmental impact. You’ve set your goals and know what you want to measure, but when it’s time to run the assessment, things stall. Either the LCA software is too technical, the data’s hard to collect, or your team can’t move forward without expert help.
That’s a common problem. Most Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools are built for specialists, not for teams making everyday business decisions like evaluating new suppliers for ingredients or packaging, negotiating pricing or contract terms, or setting priorities for reducing carbon emissions.
They’re powerful but not easy for most people to use.
In this article, we’ll unpack what LCA software does, how the top tools compare, and how to choose one that fits your needs.
Read on.
Life Cycle Assessment software helps you assess the environmental impact of a product, service, or process throughout its entire life cycle.
This includes every stage from raw material extraction, production, and packaging, to transportation, use, and disposal or recycling (commonly known as cradle-to-grave).
Say your team is comparing two versions of the same pesto. One is organic, the other isn’t. One comes in a glass jar, the other in plastic. One’s made in France, the other in Italy. Which one has the lower environmental impact?
At first glance, the answer might seem obvious. But is it?
The organic version might use more land or water. Glass takes more energy to produce and ship than plastic, and while the French pesto is local (assuming you're in France), the Italian one might’ve been shipped by train, not truck.
In short, you can’t know without doing a full Life Cycle Assessment.
The goal is to pinpoint where the biggest impacts happen and use that insight to make better decisions.
Depending on their goals, companies use LCA software to:
Most LCA tools are built on international standards like ISO 14040 and 14044, which define how to carry out consistent, credible LCAs.
Not all LCA software is built for the same purpose, just like a Swiss Army knife and a chef’s knife both cut but serve very different needs.
Traditional LCA tools like OpenLCA, SimaPro, and Sphera(GaBi) are designed with academics and researchers in mind. They put all the responsibility on the user — everything from defining how the software works to choosing the data and setting up the calculations.
This level of customization is useful, but it often requires deep expertise and a lot of time.
Modern LCA software tools like Carbon Maps take a different approach. They aim to combine scientific accuracy with business-friendly features. These platforms focus on automation, collaboration, and ease of use, so teams can assess products at scale and make decisions faster without needing to be LCA experts.
Therefore, the difference isn't about which software is better overall but which one fits with your organization's needs, resources, and sustainability goals.
Carbon Maps is a sustainability platformfor the food industry, specializing in product-level Life Cycle Assessments at scale. It helps food producers, retailers, and food service companies measure, manage, and reduce their environmental footprint with high precision and speed.
It calculates impact based on your actual recipe, using the real ingredients, quantities, and packaging details from your formulations.
For example, if your product is a four cheese pizza, a database like Agribalyse will provide an emission factor based on what a four cheese pizza typically contains.
Carbon Maps, on the other hand, breaks it down ingredient by ingredient, i.e. each cheese, the dough, the sauce, the packaging, etc. This produces a footprint that reflects what’s actually in your product.
This tailored approach was used to assess Foodles' recipe and provided more precise, product-specific results.
When exact data such as ingredients or materials aren't available isn't available, the platform can start with category averages and gradually improve the calculation as more specific inputs are added.
Depending on available resources, running Life Cycle Assessments for a few products is manageable with manual tools. But if you need to do hundreds or thousands of LCAs, doing it manually becomes impossible.
Traditional tools like OpenLCA rely heavily on manual modeling. You have to define system boundaries, build each process step by step, and manually connect them to map the full life cycle. It offers customization but the set-up is time-consuming, and even small changes can mean redoing a lot of the work.
Carbon Maps automates much of this process through model templates while aligning with ISO 14040, 14044, and 14067 standards.
This makes it possible to evaluate and update the footprint of hundreds or even thousands of products without rebuilding everything each time something changes. For manufacturers and retailers managing large product portfolios, this creates a faster, more consistent way to assess impact at scale.
Key data such as recipes, sourcing, and packaging are structured in the platform to support continuous updates. When a product is reformulated or a supplier changes, the footprint adjusts automatically. No need to redo the full assessment.
In the food industry, a large share of emissions comes from upstream activities like farming, processing, and transport. This makes supplier data important for precise footprinting. However, collecting that data, and keeping it current, is one of the biggest challenges in Life Cycle Assessment.
Carbon Maps helps simplify that process. It lets you engage your suppliers and collect data directly from them through supplier sustainability assessments. It includes built-in tools for sending out questionnaires, tracking responses, and inviting suppliers to fill in their information directly into the system.
This gives structure to what is often a scattered, manual process. It also helps companies move away from industry averages toward product-specific data, that better reflects what’s actually happening in their supply chain — which is key for more precise Scope 3 reporting.
The LCA software allows teams to test the impact of a change before making it. For example, what happens to a product’s footprint if you switch from conventional to organic milk? What if you change an ingredient, a supplier, or use a different type of packaging?
These scenarios can be modeled instantly, giving teams a clear view of how each decision affects a product's environmental impact.
This kind of eco-design capability shifts LCA from being something you do after a product is launched to something you can use while making decisions. It gives R&D, procurement, and sustainability teams a shared way to evaluate trade-offs, so impact becomes part of the conversation alongside cost and quality.
Watch how Andros, a French multinational food company, used this feature to support its sustainability strategy.
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Carbon Maps treats packaging separately in its environmental assessments, giving it the same level of detail as the product itself. In other LCA tools, packaging is often overlooked, lumped into a general product category, or requires running a separate assessment altogether.
The LCA tool zooms in on packaging and shows its impact broken down by material, while still keeping everything in a single-pane view.
It analyzes materials individually, taking into account their recyclability, end-of-life treatment, and the emissions generated before the packaging is even used.
This gives teams a clearer view of how packaging contributes to the total footprint. It also helps inform better choices around packaging design and sourcing.
Carbon Maps connects environmental data with business metrics like sales volume and impact per unit (e.g., CO₂ per kilo sold). This helps teams go beyond reporting and start making informed decisions.
For example, a product with average emissions might still be your biggest contributor simply because it sells more than anything else. The platform highlights these patterns so you can prioritize based on total footprint, not just per-unit figures.
From France’s Climate Label to the EU’s Digital Product Passport, transparency expectations are rising. Carbon Maps helps companies stay ready by generating the data needed to meet these demands.
The platform also produces product-level reports that support Green Claims requirements, EU Product Environmental Footprint (PEF), Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), and Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi).
Carbon Maps isn’t limited to sustainability professionals. Since it’s cloud-based, teams can collaborate directly in the platform, unlike most traditional LCA software that still run on desktops.
The interface is simple enough for a product manager to run comparisons, or for a retailer to evaluate a new supplier.
At the same time, it gives sustainability teams the depth they need for Scope 3 reporting, and executives the overview they need to track progress.
Everyone works from the same platform, with views tailored to their role.
Book a demo to get started
To understand how Carbon Maps compares, it helps to look at it alongside top LCA software: OpenLCA, Sphera, and SimaPro.
Cost is also a key factor when comparing LCA software. Traditional tools often come with added expenses, like hiring specialists or paying for subscriptions to databases like Ecoinvent.
Carbon Maps takes care of this complexity. The platform supports simplified LCA at scale (across thousands of products) to help companies meet reporting requirements or benchmark against industry standards
Before deciding on the right solution, ask yourself:
Who will be using the tool? If limited to specialists, traditional tools may work well. If you need broader adoption across teams, consider easy-to-use options like Carbon Maps.
How many products are you assessing? For one-off or small numbers of detailed assessments, traditional tools excel. For large portfolios, automation becomes essential.
Are you reporting, making decisions, or both? If compliance is your only goal, any tool might work. If you need to include environmental impact in business decisions, usability and scenario modeling become more important.
Do you need to comply with specific requirements? If you need to meet requirements like SBTi, CSRD, EU PEF, or Green Claims, make sure the tool supports them.
How fast do you need to work? Some tools require more manual setup and give users full control over the details. Others are built for speed, with automation that makes it easier to assess many products in a short amount of time.
Choosing LCA software isn’t about picking the most advanced tool. It’s about finding one that fits.
For some organizations, the customization and depth of traditional tools make the most sense. For others without LCA specialists or those managing large product portfolios, automation and ease of use matter more.
Carbon Maps offers the best of both worlds. Book a demo today
LCA measures the environmental impact of a product or process throughout its entire life cycle, covering multiple indicators such as emissions, water use, land use, and more.
PCF only measures carbon emissions. It’s useful for carbon tracking and reporting, and can be calculated using a standalone Product Carbon Footprint software or as a simplified feature within some LCA tools.
Read our article on PCF vs LCA for a deeper comparison.
It depends on your goals and level of expertise.
Use OpenLCA, SimaPro, or Sphera if you need detailed control and have experience with LCA. Choose newer tools like Carbon Maps if you need to assess many products quickly, automate updates, or want something easy to use.
Some LCA software tools require specialist knowledge and training. Others, like Carbon Maps, are designed to be more user-friendly, with simple workflows that can be used by people outside the sustainability field.
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