Free Calculator Shows Environmental Balance Of Products

2023 Author : Hannah Pearcy | [email protected] . Last modified: 2023-06-01 01:49

Environmental management plays an increasingly important role in companies. The VDI Center for Resource Efficiency has now expanded its online cost calculator with these functions in order to obtain concrete figures on the ecological footprint of your own company and to identify concrete savings potential.

Energy and raw material consumption as well as greenhouse gas emissions are calculated

The so-called KEA-KRA-GHG calculator gives the cumulative energy and raw material costs (KEA or KRA) and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions (GHG emissions) based on the operational material and energy consumption in the individual life cycle phases - production, use, Recovery - on.

The methodological foundations for the module are the guidelines VDI 4600, VDI 4800 Sheet 2 and the life cycle assessment. A database of environmental profiles for selected materials is stored for the calculations, based on data from the Federal Environment Agency. The user can enter additional profiles manually if the required values are not stored in the database.

In which product life phase is most consumed

The result is output as a pie chart showing the total values of the KEA, KRA and the GHG emissions. In this way it can be seen in which phase of life the product in question has the highest values. These are listed according to individual materials and individual energy sources.

Overall, the cost calculator consists of four modules that can be used individually or on top of each other

• 1. The first module, the cost structure calculator , helps the user to make the cost structure in his company transparent: Which areas in the company are the cost drivers and what share do material and energy costs have in the company? In addition, the user can compare their own operational cost structure with the respective industry averages of the Federal Statistical Office.
• 2. With the second module, the material flow cost calculator, the focus is on the material flows in the company : The material flow cost calculation serves to quantify material and energy consumption and to identify processes that cause high loss costs.
• 3. The third module is the newly added KEA-KRA-GHG calculator , which, as described, shows the cumulative energy and raw material costs and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions in the life cycle phases.
• 4. If SMEs want to know which investment is most economical for their company, they can use the investment calculator as a fourth module. This compares operational investments based on their life cycle costs by calculating the payback period of the new investment and showing the annual savings.

The calculator can be used online and offline free of charge.

To the free web version