Calculator available for packaging Life Cycle Assessments  

Botta Packaging, Italy, is launching a free and simple online LCA tool to encourage more companies to use Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) as part of their wider sustainability programs.

Their new, free, simplified LCA calculator will make finding the environmental impact of packaging easier than ever.

LCA’s are complex, costly and time prohibitive to undertake. Botta wants to empower real sustainable business change by enabling SMEs to use their simplified LCA calculator for free. The tool will help them find the top-level environmental value of packaging as a first step before deciding to conduct a full comprehensive study themselves. Sustainability is a path and allowing more businesses to enter this path using a simplified and accessible LCA calculator tool can be a way of enabling more thorough change in the future.

In its drive to encourage change, Botta Packaging realised that packaging is often the first thing a customer sees of a company’s products. So, in the modern world where businesses are increasingly environmentally savvy, it makes sense that the packaging impact should be carefully considered.

“We are really proud to be launching a tool with the potential to make an impact. As far as we know this is the first tool of its kind to be launched for free in Italy, possibly the first of its kind to be used for calculating packaging impacts in this way. As a company, we don’t only sell sustainable packaging with the aim of helping our customers reduce their own footprint, but want to help inspire and enable others to get involved and make changes that will benefit the planet.” Lara Botta, VP Botta Packaging, Italy

By investing in this tool, Botta is hoping that they can improve the culture, knowledge, and accessibility of sustainability and LCA’s as a tool for making sustainable business decisions.

LCAs are a thorough method of analysing a products’ different environmental impacts throughout its life-cycle, from raw material extraction, through to production and distribution, right through to use and disposal. Whilst really valuable, it can take months to assess a product, which is where Botta has tried to simplify the work in order to get an idea of the impact different materials in packaging have, prior to making packaging choices.