How we calculate environmental impact

Overview

NormaTrack's primary calculation engine is an internal Python microservice implementing the European Commission's Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules for Apparel & Footwear (PEFCR-AF v1.3, 2022), fully aligned with ISO 14040 / ISO 14044. It resolves each material against a verified emission-factor database (company-linked → supplier-verified → country → region → global → category-average) and combines it with the EU PEF Circular Footprint Formula for recycled content and a Monte Carlo uncertainty model calibrated to the ecoinvent Pedigree Matrix. Ecobalyse— the French government's official LCA tool — is available as an alternate, opt-in engine for brands that specifically want Ecobalyse-branded results; it requires its own API configuration and is not the default.

When a product lacks sufficient data (below 50% data completeness), NormaTrack does not fall back to fabricated defaults or text-parsed estimates. The result is still calculated, but is labelled Estimate and flagged as indicative-only — not suitable for external claims. NormaTrack never silently substitutes an assumed weight or parses free-text material composition to reach a result.

System Boundaries

Lifecycle stages

NormaTrack models a cradle-to-gateboundary by default, covering raw material extraction through to the brand's shipping gate. Use phase and end-of-life are available as optional modules with clearly disclosed assumptions.

What is included

• Raw fibre/material production: spinning, weaving, knitting, dyeing, finishing
• Upstream processing energy (electricity, heat) at contract manufacturers
• Transport from raw material origin to brand warehouse (sea, road, air, rail)
• Primary and secondary packaging materials
• GHG Protocol Scope 3 Category 1 (purchased goods) and Category 4 (upstream transport)

What is excluded

• Scope 1 — Direct emissions from owned or controlled facilities (gas combustion, refrigerant leakage)
• Scope 2 — Purchased electricity for owned operations (captured in Scope 3 Cat. 1 for CMT only)
• Scope 3 Cat. 9 — Downstream transport to end customer (requires logistics provider data)
• Scope 3 Cat. 11 — Consumer use phase (washing, drying, ironing) — available in eco-design module only
• Scope 3 Cat. 12 — End-of-life treatment of sold products — optional module only
• Scope 3 Cat. 6/7 — Business travel and employee commuting
• Water consumption impact category (tracked as volume, not toxicity-weighted)
• Biodiversity impact (no characterisation factor applied)

Emission Factor Sources

Resolution hierarchy

For each linked material, NormaTrack's primary engine resolves an emission factor through a seven-tier hierarchy, most-specific first. Each material's result carries a confidence tier (High / Medium / Low) reflecting how far down this hierarchy its factor came from.

Primary databases

NormaTrack's material library is built from the databases below, cross-validated against each other where coverage overlaps. All values are cradle-to-gate unless noted otherwise. Ecobalyse (below) is available as an alternate opt-in engine with its own internal dataset, separate from this library.

Manufacturer Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs)

For branded sustainable fibres, we use the manufacturer's own published EPDs rather than generic database averages. EPDs are third-party verified and represent actual production data.

Transport Model

Mode emission factors

Transport contributions are calculated as EF (kg CO₂e/tonne·km) × distance (km) × mass (kg) ÷ 1,000. All factors below are cradle-to-gate (well-to-wheel or well-to-wake).

Distance defaults & fallbacks

When the country of origin is known, NormaTrack uses a port-to-port sea route lookup table covering 80+ major fashion trade lanes. Routes account for actual maritime corridors — Asia → Europe via Suez Canal (~20,300 km), Cape of Good Hope (~24,000 km when Suez is congested), and intra-regional short-haul routes. The lookup table replaces the previous haversine (straight-line) estimate, which systematically underestimated trans-oceanic distances by ~2.3×. When origin is unknown, conservative fallback values apply:

Processing & Manufacturing

When a product has linked, process-specific factors, processing is modelled using those factors — not a generic energy intensity. The engine uses the fabric formation type (knitted, woven, nonwoven) and dyeing process (reactive, disperse, vat, natural, pigment, solution-dyed) to select the right process chain. These determine the actual processing contribution, which varies significantly between processes — which is why setting these fields in the product editor directly impacts the calculated footprint.

Recycled Content

When a material contains recycled content, NormaTrack applies the full EU Product Environmental Footprint Circular Footprint Formula (CFF)as defined in Commission Recommendation 2021/2279/EU §4.4.3 and PEFCR-AF v1.3 §6.3.1. The formula is applied at the material production stage only (cradle-to-gate).

End-of-Life

End-of-life is an optional module, not part of the default cradle-to-gate LCA run. When enabled, the following default factor is applied.

EOL factors are automatically adjusted for the brand's market country. EU markets with extended producer responsibility (EPR) schemes have lower effective EOL impact than global average; markets with limited textile collection infrastructure have higher impact. Products with active take-back programmes or guaranteed recycling contracts may use a lower EOL value — but this requires documented evidence from the waste treatment partner.

Material Library

NormaTrack maintains a curated library of 428 verified materials with documented emission factors, source citations, and uncertainty ranges. The emission factor database contains country-specific records covering the top producing countries for each major fibre type — ensuring that a cotton garment made in China (5.0 kg CO₂e/kg) is distinguished from the same garment made in Turkey (3.8 kg CO₂e/kg), rather than defaulting to a single world average. All platform-level materials are read-only for end users; they are updated by NormaTrack as new publications become available.

Data tiers

Coverage & categories

Blend calculation

For blended fabrics, NormaTrack calculates the blended emission factor as a weighted average of component emission factors by mass percentage:

All blend calculations in the library use this method. Where a blend involves a branded material with its own EPD (e.g., Tencel™), the EPD value takes precedence over the generic database value.

Sustainability Score

NormaTrack produces a composite sustainability score (0–100) from five ADEME-aligned impact dimensions. The score is a relative ranking tool, not an absolute certification.

Uncertainty & Data Quality

Per ISO 14044 §4.3.4, NormaTrack documents uncertainty for every calculation. Every product variant receives a data completeness score (0–100%)based on the fields actually provided — not assumed. Completeness drives the result's quality label; it does not gate whether a calculation runs.

The completeness score is calculated from 8 real-data fields. Auto-derived values (e.g., product type) do not count toward completeness. The scored fields are:

Uncertainty is not a flat percentage assigned by quality label. Every calculation runs a Monte Carlo simulation: each input (each material, each processing stage, transport, packaging) is modelled as a lognormal distribution whose spread is calibrated to the ecoinvent Pedigree Matrix(Weidema et al., 2013) based on how that specific input was sourced — a user-verified override is treated as far more certain than an unverified category-average fallback. The simulation samples the combined result thousands of times and reports the 5th, 50th, and 95th percentile (P5 / P50 / P95) — a range specific to that product's actual mix of inputs, not a single number per tier.

A product's overall result quality label (Completed / Basic / Estimate, above) reflects data completeness — how many required fields are present. Its P5–P95 uncertainty range reflects data quality — how reliable the sourced values are. A product can be 100% complete and still carry a wide uncertainty range if most of its materials resolved through fallback tiers rather than verified links.

GHG Inventory

NormaTrack aggregates product-level LCA results into a company-level GHG inventory aligned with the GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard (2011).

Benchmarking

NormaTrack provides industry benchmark comparisons to contextualise product carbon footprints. Benchmarks are drawn from published literature, not from a live industry data panel.

Limitations

This is a screening tool, not a certified LCA

NormaTrack produces screening-level estimates (±15–50% depending on data quality). Results are not equivalent to ISO 14044-compliant LCAs or Type III EPDs, both of which require independent third-party verification and primary data. Do not cite NormaTrack results as "certified" or "verified" without additional audit.

Scope 1 and Scope 2 are not covered

NormaTrack does not collect factory electricity or gas consumption data. The GHG inventory is therefore incomplete for CSRD/ESRS E1 purposes. Companies must collect Scope 1 and 2 data from their own facilities separately.

Processing energy estimates

The internal engine uses product-type-specific energy intensities (1.4 kWh/kg for a tank top → 5.2 kWh/kg for boots), derived from ecoinvent 3.10 and ADEME 2023. When the product type cannot be identified, a generic 2.5 kWh/kg fallback is applied. These values are engineering estimates — primary factory energy data (kWh/kg) is required for product-specific external claims.

Transport distance estimation

When country of origin is known, NormaTrack uses a port-to-port sea route lookup table covering 80+ fashion trade lanes. This accounts for major maritime corridors (Suez Canal, Strait of Malacca) and is significantly more accurate than straight-line geodesic estimates. Road distances use haversine approximation with a 20% corridor adjustment for intra-continental routes. When origin is unknown, conservative fallback values are applied.

Benchmarks are literature-based

Industry benchmark ranges come from published studies, not a live panel of real brand data. Published LCAs may use different system boundaries, functional units, and allocation approaches, making direct comparisons inherently imprecise.

Air freight radiative forcing

Air freight emission factors cover CO₂ only by default (GHG Protocol scope). High-altitude contrail and cirrus effects (Radiative Forcing Index, RFI) may multiply total warming impact by 2.1× (Lee et al. 2021 best estimate; range 1.7–3.8× at 95% confidence). NormaTrack includes an optional RFI flag in audit reports: when enabled, air freight CO₂e is multiplied by 2.1× and the assumption is disclosed in the audit trail. This flag is off by default to remain aligned with GHG Protocol reporting conventions.

• Biodiversity impact and land use are not quantified
• Chemical toxicity is scored qualitatively (SVHC presence / absence), not with characterisation factors
• Microplastic shedding during washing is not modelled in the standard use-phase module
• Water quality (toxicity-weighted) is not modelled — only volumetric water use is tracked

Changelog

NormaTrack's methodology evolves as new published sources become available. All changes are versioned and disclosed below. Recalculation of existing products on database updates is noted explicitly.

Source version numbers in the NormaTrack material library are frozen at the version used when the material was created. When a database releases a new version (e.g., Higg MSI 3.8), materials will be flagged for review and updated in the next library revision.