Material and Service Inputs

This group includes the life cycle impacts of all material and service inputs to the displayed product. In LCA terminology, it is the System Process data for material and service inputs. Practically, this means that the supply chain impacts for an input have been rolled up and displayed as coming from the input. So a Textile Mill input might show up as using a lot of water, when in fact it is the farming behind it that is responsible.

Example: Glass Container Manufacturing

Transport of Inputs

This group includes the impacts due to the delivery of the inputs to the production facility. For Container Glass, it would include the life cycle impacts due to transport of the sand, dolomite, limestone, etc to the glass factory.

Example: Glass Container Manufacturing

Energy Inputs

This group contains the life cycle impacts of purchased energy, including that of purchased electricity. It also includes as “Other Energy Inputs” the life cycle impacts of producing purchased natural gas, coal and petroleum, but it does not include the impacts from combusting them onsite. Those emissions are covered in the "direct operations" group.

Example: Glass Container Manufacturing

Direct Operations

This group includes direct, onsite impacts. It includes the emissions from combusting fuels, but it does not include the life cycle emissions of producing the fuels. Those emissions are covered in the "Energy Inputs" group.

Example: Glass Container Manufacturing

Distribution

This group includes the impacts from the warehousing, final delivery, and retailing of the finished product.

Example: Glass Container Manufacturing

Consumer Use

This group includes impacts from direct use of energy by products in their use phase. It does not include indirect energy use, such as the energy required to refrigerate milk, or wash clothes. Instead, that energy is assigned to the devices that are plugged in (refrigerators and washing machines in this case).

Example: Glass Container Manufacturing

Focus on Consumer Products

This visualization provides data on consumer facing goods, with the impacts due to final delivery, wholesaling and retailing margins. As such, there are 280 sectors (of the total 430 published in Open IO) shown in this visualization. Excluded are products for which the US Bureau of Economic Analysis does not compute “Personal Consumption Expenditures” or PCEs.

Supply Chain Scope

The chart displays impacts on a "Cradle through Consumer" basis, which means it includes everything from raw material extraction through consumer use. The chart includes neither impacts nor credits due to end of life management. Materials and Service Inputs that register less than a 1% impact contribution for a particular damage category are grouped into "All Other Inputs." For additional information on each stage, click on the name of the stage in the graphic, or the question mark below that stage. The graphic below provides a general overview of how the stages are organized.

Example: Glass Container Manufacturing

Damage Category Scope

The damage categories displayed here are documented in the Open IO Database, but a brief description can be given. The climate change impacts are given in Carbon Dioxide equivalents (CO2-eq), which were arrived at by converting various greenhouse gases into this reference gas via the IPCC 500a method. The water consumption damage is theoretically the water consumed (not returned to the source), but in practice we were only able to differentiate between withdrawals and consumption for the US Thermoelectric Power Industry (which plays a substantial role in water consumption). Otherwise, we have assumed that water withdrawn is equal to water consumed, which will tend to overestimate the overall levels of water consumed per dollar of product. More detailed documentation is available as part of the Open IO documentation.

Damage Category Scope

The visualization is graphically represented as a relative measure – shares of contribution to the overall impact of the product. The total impact of the product is also provided in impacts per US Dollar (USD) in the year 2002.

Consumer Use Phase

Consumer use phase impacts are available only for those consumer products that directly use energy either as electricity (battery or plugged-in) or by burning some type of fuel (e.g., oil, coal, or gasoline). The exception to this is the Automotive product group, for which consumer use phase energy use data is generally not available.