ISO 14040/14044 · worked case studies

Run a real assessment before you commit to anything

Three published case studies with full inventories. Change any quantity or mass and the impact assessment recalculates as you type. The calculator is free and needs no account — only the downloadable report asks for your details.

Step 1 · Choose a case study

Step 2 · ISO 14044 §4.2 · Goal, functional unit & boundary

Single-use PET water bottle, 500 ml

Goal of the study

Quantify the cradle-to-gate carbon footprint of one filled 500 ml single-use PET water bottle, identify the dominant material hotspot, and establish a baseline against which lightweighting and recycled-content options can be compared.

Functional unit

Containment and delivery of 500 ml of still drinking water to the point of retail sale — one filled, capped and labelled bottle.

Reference flow

1 bottle — 22 g PET body, 3 g HDPE cap, 1.5 g BOPP label, 0.5 g adhesive. Total packaging mass 27 g.

Excluded

Use phase (no energy or water input at point of use) and end-of-life treatment — both fall outside a cradle-to-gate boundary.

System boundary — change it and watch the answer move

Cradle-to-gate · as published

Counts everything from extracting the raw materials to the finished product leaving the factory. This is the default for a component or material sold business-to-business, because the seller controls nothing that happens afterwards.

Excludes the use phase and end-of-life entirely. For anything that consumes energy while in service, this boundary can hide the majority of the real footprint.

Raw materialsManufacturing & energyTransport & distributionUse phaseEnd of life

Step 3 · Edit the inventory, read the assessment

Total — GWP100, cradle-to-gate

81.5g CO₂e

per functional unit · 7 processes

ISO 14044 §4.3 · Inventory analysis

Inventory — edit any quantity or mass

Emission factors are fixed and cited — an inventory without a source is not an inventory. Everything the study actually assumes about the product is yours to change.

cradle-to-gateGWP100

Raw materials

Component · source	Unit	EF GWP	CO₂e (kg)
PET resin — bottle body PlasticsEurope Eco-profile — PET granulate (bottle grade)	pcs	2.15	0.04730 58.0%
HDPE closure — screw cap PlasticsEurope Eco-profile — HDPE granulate	pcs	1.9	0.00570 7.0%
BOPP film label PlasticsEurope Eco-profile — BOPP film	pcs	2.7	0.00405 5.0%
Acrylic label adhesive Ecoinvent — acrylic binder, water-based dispersion	pcs	3.2	0.00160 2.0%

Manufacturing & energy

Component · source	Qty	Unit	Mass (g)	EF GWP	CO₂e (kg)
Stretch blow moulding — electricity DEFRA/BEIS GHG conversion factors — UK grid electricity		kWh	—	0.207	0.01759 21.6%
Filling, capping & labelling — electricity DEFRA/BEIS GHG conversion factors — UK grid electricity		kWh	—	0.207	0.00435 5.3%

Transport & distribution

Component · source	Qty	Unit	Mass (g)	EF GWP	CO₂e (kg)
Road freight to distribution centre DEFRA/BEIS — HGV articulated, average laden (27 g × 320 km)		t·km	—	0.107	0.00092 1.1%

End of life· outside boundary

Component · source	Qty	Unit	Mass (g)	EF GWP	CO₂e (kg)
Kerbside collection & reprocessing — PET DEFRA/BEIS — plastics, closed-loop recycling (70% collection rate)		kg	—	0.021	—

Total CO₂e — cradle-to-gate

81.5 g CO₂e

Mass in scope

27.0 g

7 processes logged · ISO 14044 §4.3

ISO 14044 §4.4 · Impact assessment

Contribution by life cycle stage

Raw materials71.9% · 58.6 g CO₂e

Manufacturing & energy26.9% · 21.9 g CO₂e

Transport & distribution1.1% · 0.9 g CO₂e

ISO 14044 §4.5.2 · Contribution analysis

Contribution by process

PET resin — bottle body58.0% · 47.3 g CO₂e

Stretch blow moulding — electricity21.6% · 17.6 g CO₂e

HDPE closure — screw cap7.0% · 5.7 g CO₂e

Filling, capping & labelling — electricity5.3% · 4.3 g CO₂e

BOPP film label5.0% · 4.1 g CO₂e

Acrylic label adhesive2.0% · 1.6 g CO₂e

Road freight to distribution centre1.1% · 0.9 g CO₂e

Hotspot identified · ISO 14044 §4.5

PET resin — bottle body — 58.0% of total

The bottle body dominates because it carries most of the mass and PET is an energy-intensive polymer. Lightweighting from 22 g to 18 g, or switching to 50% rPET, are the two standard levers here.

What this case is for

Mass drives the material stage

Impact from a material row is mass × emission factor. Change the PET body mass and watch how much of the total moves — this is why lightweighting is the first lever every packaging engineer reaches for.

A high factor is not a high impact

The acrylic adhesive has the largest emission factor in the table and the smallest contribution. Students routinely confuse intensity with significance.

Transport rarely wins

Road freight is about 1% of this footprint. The intuition that shipping is the problem almost never survives contact with an inventory.

The boundary decides the answer

This is cradle-to-gate, so the use phase and end-of-life are excluded. A cradle-to-grave study of the same bottle would tell a different story about recycling.

Your result · 81.5 g CO₂e

Take the full report with you

Three pages, in canvas order. Page one is the LCA Canvas itself with all eight blocks filled from your figures; pages two and three carry the detail — the complete inventory with cited sources, the impact assessment, and the interpretation. Give us a name and an email and it unlocks.