The environmental crisis is not just climatic, it is systemic. Assessing environmental impact means going far beyond carbon emissions, it means evaluating all the categories of impact of human activity: its effect on global warming, but also on water, on air and soil quality, on the ozone layer... In short, on all the resources fundamental to biodiversity and life on earth.
Through its digital technology based on the only method scientifically recognized by the European Union, its applications for the general public and its solutions for businesses, Glimpact enables everyone to measure their global environmental impact and discover how to reduce it effectively.
Based on the PEF (Product Environmental Footprint) method, developed by the scientific community under the aegis of the European Commission, Glimpact analyzes the impact of any product with regard to 16 environmental impact categories: climate change, fine particle emissions, depletion of water resources, depletion of non-renewable fossil and mineral resources, land use, ozone depletion, soil acidification, ionizing radiation, photochemical ozone formation, terrestrial, marine and freshwater eutrophication, human carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic toxicity, freshwater eco toxicity...
For each of these, impact characterization methods are precisely defined and apply to all stages of the product life cycle (from raw materials to end-of-life). Finally, the PEF method weighs the results for these different impact categories to obtain an overall, understandable environmental score - the only one worth having, as it enables organizations or products to be compared objectively with each other.
As of April 25, 2024, this scientifically rigorous calculation method is the only one recognized for all European Union countries in terms of environmental footprint and eco-design.
No more self-proclaimed environmental claims. No more possibility of claiming ecological responsibility based on a single environmental criterion. No more room for greenwashing: no more simplistic prejudices, partial analyses, and hasty judgments made without understanding the magnitudes involved. No more hiding certain stages of a product's life. By modeling the requirements of the PEF method, Glimpact provides companies, journalists, and citizens with tools to measure environmental impact comprehensively, without any blind spots.
With the widespread adoption of the PEF method as the reference framework for the new European regulations, there is now one single method for calculating the environmental footprint of products and organizations for all countries in the EU. Finally, there is a single scientifically rigorous methodology that takes into account the overall environmental footprint in all dimensions, allowing us to understand planetary boundaries.
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Measuring impact on a global scale overturns many simplistic prejudices and hasty judgments, established without any perception of orders of magnitude. Looking at things globally, for example, makes it possible to realize that contrary to what we may think:
⁃ that a PET plastic bottle has a much lower environmental impact than a single-use glass bottle (due to the amount of energy required to remelt the glass)
⁃ that almond-based "plant milk" has a much higher impact than cow's milk (mainly due to the amount of water needed to produce almonds).
⁃ that it's not transport (even from Asia) that is responsible for the environmental impact of a garment but above all the fiber used to produce it and certain industrial processes, foremost among which are dyeing or even weaving.
⁃ that in summer in Madrid, it's better to eat French tomatoes than Spanish ones (due to the water stress affecting a large part of Spain's agricultural regions).
In short, the right trade-offs cannot be based on simplistic judgments, but require an analysis that takes into account all the components of the environmental crisis.
Find out more about the methodological framework ➞