PCF or LCA? That is the question.
31 Jul 2026
Walk into almost any sustainability meeting today and one topic is guaranteed to dominate the conversation: carbon.
Customers are asking for Product Carbon Footprints (PCFs). Regulations increasingly require carbon-related disclosures. Net Zero targets sit at the heart of corporate sustainability strategies. Carbon has become the common language that businesses, investors, regulators, and consumers all understand.
For me this raises a question: Have we become so obsessed with carbon that that we're overlooking other important environmental impacts?
The rise of the Product Carbon Footprint
Over the Past 8 years that I have been in the sustainability space, Measuring Product Carbon Footprints has moved from being a nice to have business policy to a business necessity.
It's easy to see why PCFs have gained momentum. With PCF providing a quantifiable measure of a product's greenhouse gas emissions throughout its life cycle, it is helping organisations identify hotspots, engage suppliers, and demonstrate progress towards decarbonisation goals.
A PCF is a single and easy to understand metric to quantify the greenhouse gas emissions associated with a product. Allowing this metric to easily align with corporate climate commitments, supports sustainability reporting requirements, and is simpler to understand when being considered in purchasing decisions. As a result, the PCF is becoming an important environmental KPI for measuring and communicating product-level sustainability performance.
But sustainability was never just about carbon.
So, is Carbon/PCF giving us the full picture?
Imagine two products. One has a lower carbon footprint than the other. Most consumers would assume that the one with the lower carbon footprint is the more sustainable choice. Low Carbon equals sustainable; Right?
But what if that same product consumes significantly more water during production?
What if it relies on scarce raw materials?
What if it creates greater pressure on ecosystems or biodiversity?
Suddenly, the answer becomes less straightforward. A lower carbon footprint shouldn’t be assumed automatically to mean a lower overall environmental impact. Considering this example, we see very often, certain bio-based plastics have be perceived as more sustainable than their fossil-based counterparts, yet under some carbon accounting methodologies they have resulted in a higher reported carbon footprint due to factors such as land use, agricultural inputs, and the treatment of biogenic carbon.
This is where we find our clients facing difficult trade-offs. By focusing on a single metric, we risk improving one environmental outcome while unintentionally worsening another.
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool that helps address exactly this challenge. While PCF focuses on climate change impact and, yes, is important to meet regulatory reporting requirement(s), LCA considers a broader range of environmental indicators across a product's entire life cycle.
These include:
- Climate change
- Water consumption
- Resource depletion
- Acidification
- Eutrophication
- Land use
- Human health impacts
- Ecotoxicity
LCA doesn't replace PCF, rather, it is a more powerful tool that provides the context needed to understand whether carbon reductions are leading to holistically better environmental outcomes.
So, make sure you are choosing the right tool for the job.
In simple terms, PCF helps answer: "How much carbon does this product emit?"
LCA helps answer: "What is the overall environmental impact of this product/good/material?"
Should we become so obsessed with Carbon or PCF?
One reason carbon has become so influential is that it is relatively easy to communicate. A single CO₂e value can be benchmarked, reported, compared, and understood across industries. Whether you're a producer, retailer, investor, regulator, or consumer, carbon provides a common language. It allows organisations to set targets, track progress, compare products, and demonstrate action against climate change in a way that is both measurable and easily understood.
Environmental sustainability, however, is inherently more complex.
What will the next five years look like?
Carbon is unlikely to disappear from the centre of sustainability discussions anytime soon. Regulatory requirements, customer expectations, and climate commitments will ensure that emissions remain a critical metric for organisations across the globe. However, we are already seeing the conversation is already beginning to evolve. Biodiversity loss, water scarcity, resource security, circular economy principles, and nature related disclosures are becoming part of our client’s risk profile. Stakeholders are asking broader questions about environmental performance and long-term resilience.
Perhaps the debate isn't really about PCF versus LCA. Perhaps the real question is whether organisations are building sustainability strategies around a single environmental indicator or seeking a more complete understanding of their impacts and risks.
As sustainability professionals, are we simplifying the conversation because carbon is the most important metric, or because it is the easiest one to measure and communicate?
