Starting an LCA in Dcycle: data collection checklist

A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) measures the environmental impact of one product across its full life — from raw materials, through manufacturing, transport and use, all the way to end-of-life. Dcycle’s LCA module is built around two concepts: the Resource Manager (a library of materials, energy and waste inputs you upload) and the Portfolio (a visual canvas where you connect those resources into the product’s flow).

This checklist follows the order you’ll actually work in:

1. Scope & basic flow — plan and sketch (reference)
2. Templates — ingredients to upload — materials, energy, waste
3. How to upload them in bulk — Excel + AI mapping
4. Recipes — quantities per ingredient — what you’ll enter on the canvas (reference)
5. Gate-to-grave additional data — only if your scope reaches past the factory gate
6. Next steps

1. Scope & basic flow (reference)

Before touching Dcycle, decide your scope and sketch the production flow on paper, a whiteboard, or any diagram tool. This section is for your own reference — nothing here is uploaded — but it determines everything that follows.

Scope decisions

• Functional unit — the unit your results will be expressed in (e.g. “1 kg of finished product”, “1 litre of beverage”, “100 units of packaged goods”). All quantities in the LCA scale to this.
• System boundary — cradle-to-gate (raw materials → factory exit), gate-to-grave (factory exit → end-of-life), or cradle-to-grave (raw materials → end-of-life). Cradle-to-gate is the most common starting point.
• Reporting period — the year of data you’ll be using (e.g. all 2025 production).
• Reference year for emission factors — Dcycle uses ecoinvent v3.11 / v3.12 by default; no action needed unless you have a specific requirement.

Sketch the production flow

A minimal flow looks like this:

Raw Materials ──▶ Process step ──▶ Product ──▶ Distribution
                       │
            Energy ────┤
                       │
            Waste ◀────┘

A real one will have more steps. For every step in your process, write down:

• What materials go in (ingredients, packaging, water)
• What energy is consumed (electricity, gas, diesel, heat, steam)
• What waste comes out (solid waste, wastewater, scrap)
• The reference output of the step (e.g. “1 kg of mixed batch”, “100 units of moulded part”)

The Portfolio canvas will mirror this sketch exactly — keep it handy throughout the rest of the process.

2. Templates — ingredients to upload

Three templates feed the Resource Manager Bulk Upload: materials, energy, waste. These are reusable — a “Steel sheet 1 mm — supplier X” you upload once can be reused across LCAs. You can also create them one by one in the UI, same fields.

Template for materials (ingredients)

Physical inputs to your product — raw materials, ingredients, packaging, chemicals, components.

Field	Required	Notes
Name	Required	Be specific — “Low-density polyethylene granulate” beats “plastic”. The more precise, the better the ecoinvent mapping
Type	Required	material
Supplier	Required	Free text — name of the company you buy it from
Supplier country	Required	Country where the supplier operates (used to pick the right regional emission factor)
Description	Recommended	Grade, density, composition — anything that helps the AI mapper find the right ecoinvent entry
Address	Optional	Street address of the supplier — only needed if you want Dcycle to auto-calculate transport distances
Postal code	Optional	Same as above
Region	Optional	Narrows the geographic scope of the emission factor

Template for energy

Energy carriers consumed by your processes — electricity, natural gas, diesel, heat, steam, biomass.

Field	Required	Notes
Name	Required	E.g. “Electricity — Spanish grid”, “Natural gas industrial”
Type	Required	energy
Supplier	Required	Utility / energy provider
Supplier country	Required	Country of the grid or supply network
Description	Recommended	E.g. “100% renewable certified”, “medium-voltage industrial”

Template for waste

Solid waste, wastewater, hazardous waste, scrap, recyclable streams — anything that leaves your process and gets treated externally.

Field	Required	Notes
Name	Required	E.g. “Mixed plastic scrap to recycling”, “Industrial wastewater”
Type	Required	waste
Supplier	Required	The waste management company that processes it
Supplier country	Required	Where the treatment takes place
Description	Recommended	Treatment route — recycling, incineration, landfill, composting

3. How to upload your templates in bulk

For non-trivial LCAs (more than ~10 resources), bulk upload is much faster than entering rows one by one.

1. Go to LCA → Resource Manager → Bulk Upload
2. Download the template
3. Fill one row per resource, using exact type values: material, energy, waste
4. Upload the file

4. Recipes — quantities per ingredient (reference; entered on canvas)

Your uploaded resources are the ingredients. The recipes are how much of each goes into the product per functional unit. Recipes are not bulk-uploadable — you enter them by hand when you build the Material and Process blocks on the canvas. Have them ready before opening Dcycle.

For each step of your production flow, gather:

• Quantity of each material consumed per functional unit (e.g. 0.42 kg steel per 1 kg finished product)
• Unit for each quantity — kg, litres, kWh, m³, m², units… must match the resource’s emission factor unit
• Energy consumed per step (quantity + unit per functional unit)
• Waste generated per step (quantity + unit per functional unit)
• Reference output of each process step (name + quantity + unit — e.g. “1 kg of moulded part”, “100 units assembled”)
• Transport routes (optional — Dcycle AI prefills if you skip them): origin, destination, mass, mode

For the full block-by-block list of what each canvas block expects, see LCA Portfolio blocks: canvas reference.

5. Gate-to-grave / cradle-to-grave additional data

If your scope reaches past the factory gate, you also need the data below. These are entered on the canvas as Distribution, Product Use and End-of-Life blocks — full field requirements are in the Portfolio blocks reference.

Distribution (gate-to-grave / cradle-to-grave)

• Customer locations (address, postal code, country)
• Units sold in the reporting period
• Weight per unit (or total weight) + whether the weight is material or product
• Transport mode (carrier type) and distance

Product use (cradle-to-grave only — skip if the product doesn’t consume anything in use)

• Lifespan — quantity + unit (years / months / weeks / days)
• Electricity / Water / Combustion consumption per period — quantity, unit, frequency (all_life, yearly, monthly, weekly, daily); combustion also needs the fuel type (petrol, gas_natural, diesel)

End-of-life (cradle-to-grave only)

• Per material (or for the product as a whole): treatment route — recycling, incineration, landfill, composting, or industry_average
• Percentage going to each treatment — must sum to 100% per item
• Country where the treatment happens
• Sub-treatments (optional) — e.g. recycling 60% mechanical / 40% chemical

6. Next steps

Once your templates and recipes are ready:

1. Upload the resources in the Resource Manager (materials, energy, waste — manually or via bulk Excel)
2. Wait 24–48 hours for intelligent mapping to assign emission factors
3. Build the Portfolio on the canvas — see LCA Portfolio blocks: canvas reference for what each block expects and how to connect them
4. Calculate and review the per-block / per-resource breakdown
5. Iterate — switch suppliers, swap materials, change transport modes, and recalculate to find improvement levers

If your product or process doesn’t fit the standard blocks, contact your Customer Success contact — Dcycle’s LCA team can advise on the right modelling approach.