Reliability of carbon footprint as a decision-making tool for product development - a critical review

Various methods exist for evaluating the environmental consequences of products. With climate change high up on the political and corporate agendas, carbon footprint (CF) calculations are in strong demand. However, there are certain serious shortcomings related to the CF concept which every practitioner and potential user should be aware of. Although building upon a life cycle approach, CF addresses only impacts on climate change that may give a misleading picture of the environmental impacts and shift environmental burdens to other impacted areas, thus leading to incomplete decisions for sustainable development policies. Another very important issue is how the CF results are presented to the customer. All these conceptual and methodological shortcomings demand better understanding of the value of CF results within product development and marketing activities. In addition, understanding of the uncertainties can be crucial for properly interpreting CF results.