Impact
Calculate and analyze environmental impacts of your products
Understand your results
The impact results can be analyzed with two complementary views:
Overview
High-level insights into your products' total environmental impacts.
Material view
Granular, material-level data with detailed impact breakdowns.
Tips to help you navigate the interface:
- Bill of Materials Impact: Toggle in the top-left corner to switch between your bill of materials table and the impact results view.
- Overview Material View: Toggle in the top-left of the Impact page to inspect results in both high-level summary view and in the detailed material view.
- Tooltips: Additional information is available throughout the interface in tooltips found via hover interactions.
Overview
The Overview page provides high-level insights into your products' total environmental impacts:
Total impacts
At the top of the page, you'll see aggregate metrics:
- Biodiversity — Measured in PDF·yr (Potentially Disappeared Fraction of Species over time)
- GHG — Total greenhouse gas emissions in kg CO₂e (carbon dioxide equivalents)
- Land use — Total land area used in m² (square meters of land transformed)
- Water use — Total bluewater consumed in m³ H₂Oe (cubic meters of water-equivalent)
- Water stress — Water consumption adjusted for regional scarcity in m³ H₂Oe (cubic meters of water-equivalent)
PDF (Potentially Disappeared Fraction of Species) is an emerging biodiversity footprint metric that estimates the fraction of species globally that are committed to extinction due to nature loss pressures (e.g., land use, climate change, water use, pollution). See more in Methodology section.
Impact breakdowns
Below the totals, you'll find several detailed breakdown views that help you understand where and how impacts occur across categories, materials, and geographies:
Impact Categories — Distribution by impact categories
- Biodiversity: By nature loss pressures
- Climate change: Aggregated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
- Land use: By different types of land use
- Water use: By agricultural and non-agricultural bluewater use
- Water stress: By agriculture and non-agriculture water stress
See more in Impact group coverage
Use this view to identify which pressures contribute most to overall impact.
Impact Categories across Value Chain — Distribution by impact categories across value chain stages
- Stage 1: End-product
- Stage 2: Material manufacturing
- Stage 3: Intermediate material processing
- Stage 4: Raw material production
See more in Value chain stage coverage
Helps identify where in the value chain most impacts occur.
Top Materials by Impact — Materials with the highest impact values
- Highlights materials with the largest environmental footprint
- Shows sourcing country and relative impact value
Useful for prioritizing material-level mitigation actions.
Top Countries by Impact — Countries with the highest impact values
- Displays which sourcing countries contribute most to total impact
- Supports optimization of procurement and supplier selection
Helps locate geographic hotspots in your value chain.
Geographic Impact Distribution — Impact by country location
- Darker shades indicate higher impact levels
- Hover over a country to see specific values
Provides an overview of global impact concentration of all materials across the value chain.
Material view
The Material view provides granular, material-level data for all items in your BoM.
Table columns
The table includes the following columns:
- Material: Each material from your BoM
- Country: Sourcing location
- Spend: Total spend per material (quantity × base price)
- Base Price: Unit price of each material
- Quantity and unit: Amount of material used
- Environmental impact metrics: Impacts for each impact group and category
View controls
Use the toolbar above the table to refine and navigate data:
- Filter impact measurement: Use the search field to flexibly filter results based on your needs, such as by material, country, or impact category.
- Impact type dropdown: Select from dropdown to balance between absolute impacts and impact intensities
- Categories toggle: Click to show or hide impact categories
- Expand/Collapse all: Click to expand or collapse all material hierarchies
- Copy: Select to copy the current table view—for example to export to spreadsheet
How impact calculation works
The Nios system applies a two-step calculation process:
1. Midpoint environmental impact measurement
Each material in your BoM is analyzed to calculate its environmental footprint:
- Nios agent maps each BoM material to a relevant reference material impact intensity factor from our environmental intensity factor databases
- The material spend value is multiplied by the intensity factor to calculate environmental impacts in a standardized and comparable way
- Nios agent evaluates how closely the reference material matches your BoM entry, providing transparency in the BoM tables on underlying assumptions
- The system calculates midpoint environmental impacts, including GHG emissions, land use, water use, and pollution
2. Biodiversity translation
Midpoint environmental impacts are characterized into a single endpoint biodiversity impact metric:
- GHG emissions, land use, water use, and pollution are converted into PDF·yr (Potentially Disappeared Fraction of species over time)
- Each environmental impact is multiplied by region- and impact-specific characterization factors from the LC-Impact methodology
- These factors capture how strongly each pressure affects biodiversity in different locations, making results spatially explicit
See Methodology to understand more about the underlying scientific framework and data used.