Product LCA, EPDs & Data

Product LCA, EPDs & Data
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Explore product LCA, EPDs, and the data behind environmental assessments.

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What’s the validity period of the LCA and EPD reports of a product?

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Typically the validity period of an EPD is 5 years. There are exceptions for example for Design phase EPD where the validity is up to 36 months. EPD programs can have specific rules, for example according to EPD Hub General Program Instructions a Design EPD is valid for 18.

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Hello, How can I utilize One Click LCA for product or service design e.g. T-shirts, Electronic devices, or Data centers to measure their environmental impacts through their lifespans?

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Hi Hamed!

First of all, welcome to the One Click LCA community.

It seems we missed your post so apologies for that. Your question, however, is a quite broad one. Our offered solutions are specialized for the construction industry, while you can do assessments for any product, it’s optimized for construction products or buildings/infrastructure assessments.

  • T-shirts → You could use our product carbon / LCA modules, as we will have the data for such products however as I mentioned it’s not optimized for this type of product.
  • Electronic devices → Possible with our product carbon / LCA modules as this would fall under MEP (mechanical, electrical, and plumbing) products.
  • Data Centers → This would be a building type of assessment and one of our building tools should be used for that.

An overview of all our solutions you can find on our website by either navigating to Design and Construction Software or Manufacturing software.

Hope this helps!

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I recently joined the Bootcamp training and have been exploring the tool with the trial version. While testing different options, I noticed that there are very few generic datasets available for textile–soft furnishing products, especially fabrics with different fibre compositions.

Does this mean that One Click LCA is not yet fully optimized for textile products?
Are there any plans to expand the database or develop more relevant datasets for this product category in the future?

Thanks in advance for any insights!

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Hi Tian,

Thanks for the question! It’s actually not a lack of optimization, but rather a limitation of the Trial version.

The comprehensive data for soft furnishings and varying fiber compositions resides in the Ecoinvent database. This is fully integrated into our commercial licenses but is excluded from the trial due to licensing restrictions.

We definitely cover this category. In fact, since One Click LCA acquired SimaPro, we now have the most extensive data capabilities in the market. For most textile users, One Click LCA with the Ecoinvent add-on is the perfect solution. SimaPro is available if you need even deeper, scientific-level custom modeling.

Would you like me to check the availability of specific fibers in our full database for you?

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Hi Steven:

Thank you for the quick clarification! I was actually wondering whether the acquisition of SimaPro might help address this concern, so your explanation is very reassuring.

Our first EPD this year is for a product made from 100% polyester, and our next one (planned for 2026) will be 78% polyester and 22% cotton, following the PCR with A1–A3 mandatory and C1–C3 optional modules.

Will the generic database (with Ecoinvent access) include datasets suitable for these kinds of fibre compositions?

In addition, we work with a wide range of yarns — acrylic polymer, cotton, linen, organic cotton, recycled polyester, silk, viscose, wool, etc. — and our manufacturing processes include weaving, knitting, dyeing, coating, bonding, and printing.

Could you confirm whether these materials and processes are generally covered within the commercial datasets?

Thanks again for the support!

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Hi Tian,

Thanks for the follow-up, and great to hear regarding your EPD plans for this and next year.

I’ve now manually checked the ecoinvent database on my side as well, and I can confirm that the datasets you need are indeed available. Ecoinvent includes suitable datasets for polyester, cotton, and the polyester–cotton blends can be modelled directly by combining the respective fibre datasets in line with the PCR. The same applies for your wider range of fibres: acrylic, cotton (including organic), linen, recycled polyester, silk, viscose, and wool, all are covered within the commercial datasets.

In addition, the key textile manufacturing processes you mentioned,weaving, knitting, dyeing, coating, bonding, and printing, are also represented in the available datasets, so you will be able to model your production chain consistently within A1–A3.

So yes, both the materials and the processes you’re working with are supported, and you can model these product systems without needing any custom datasets.

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Just to add to the conversation @TIAN_TIAN, if you would like some help from our side to go over the offering from One Click LCA, you could get in touch with veselin.penchev@oneclicklca.com who can take you through our offering related to EPD creation.

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