Analysis and comparison of life cycle assessment and carbon footprint software

Abstract

Environmental management is receiving increased attention by researchers, policy makers and companies as today’s world is facing major environmental problems such as global warming and waste. As a consequence, companies are progressively improving their environmental practices and behaviors with the aim of reaching more advanced stages in their environmental management. Specifically, those companies most committed to environmental issues have started to introduce the concept of life-cycle and footprint thinking in their organizations. Nevertheless, there are currently many different software tools and companies may not knowwhich one is most suitable. Consequently, the main objective of this research is to study the different software applications to help companies choose the most suitable one in each case. To achieve this objective, the paper provides an in depth review of the literature on life-cycle and footprint thinking. As a result, more than 20 software tools have been analysed and compared. It is important to highlight that the appropriateness of one software program relative to another may very much depend on the user’s scope or objective, as the database of each program could be different.