Eco-profiles of bio-based emulsions
Eco-profiles of bio-based emulsions
Emulco wanted to gain a better understanding of the environmental footprint of the emulsions in its bio-based range and to be able to provide its customers with quantified data, particularly regarding carbon footprint, in order to support their B2B requirements.
An eco-profile is the sum of the environmental impacts associated with the production of a product, from the extraction of raw materials onwards, as determined by an LCA for various indicators. It therefore provides quantified information on a product’s environmental footprint and can be used as a basis for a downstream LCA study along the value chain.
Expertise
Materia Nova has been developing an expertise in life cycle assessment since 2012. Our teams apply the ISO 14040/44 standards and use the Environmental Footprint 3.1 methodology with SimaPro software, ensuring reliable and comparable results. The study for Emulco was carried out in October 2025 in accordance with these best practices.
Objective: To carry out a cradle-to-gate LCA of four bio-based emulsion formulations, in order to create environmental profiles for B2B communication and to identify the main contributors to environmental impacts to guide optimisation efforts.
Scope: Production of raw materials (vegetable oils and esters, surfactants, biocides, etc.), their packaging and transport to the Emulco site, and emulsion production (electricity, direct emissions, etc.). Primary packaging and end-of-life treatments are excluded.
Functional unit: 1 kg of ready-to-use emulsion.
Methodology: Collection of primary data (June 2025) supplemented by the Ecoinvent 3.11 database
Conclusions: The study established the eco-profiles of the four formulations, compared their environmental performance (Figure 1) and analysed the contributions to this footprint (Figure 2) in order to identify the most relevant areas for future improvement. Here, the main hotspot identified is, in all cases, the production of vegetable oils used as raw materials. Any improvement in this sector will inevitably lead to significant gains, and this is undoubtedly one of the key areas of eco-design that Emulco should prioritise.
Solution
Life Cycle Assessment enables to provide customers with information on the environmental performance of products, to compare different products, and to identify, through an analysis of the factors contributing to environmental impacts, how this performance might be optimised.
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