Homepage Background Image

Building Connected Sustainability Systems: From SimaPro to LCA, Reporting, and Strategy

When organizations invest in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) software, they are not simply purchasing a tool, they are investing in their ability to make informed sustainability decisions. While SimaPro is one of the world’s leading LCA platforms, successful implementation requires more than software access. It requires the right data, training, technical support, and expert guidance.

As the North American distributor of SimaPro, we provide more than a software license. Purchasing SimaPro through our team means gaining access to a dedicated group of LCA practitioners and sustainability professionals who are committed to helping you succeed. Our goal is not just to get the software installed; it’s to ensure that your team can confidently use SimaPro to answer meaningful sustainability questions and generate credible results.

Whether you are new to life cycle assessment or expanding an established sustainability program, we provide the resources and expertise needed to maximize the value of your investment:

  • Access to the DATASMART Database. One of the key benefits of working with us is access to the DATASMART Life Cycle Inventory Database. DATASMART contains more than 8,200 processes and is uniquely tailored to North American applications, incorporating US and Canadian energy grid data. This enables practitioners to build more regionally representative models and improve the relevance of their assessments. For organizations conducting LCAs in North America, access to high-quality regionalized data can significantly improve both efficiency and confidence in project results.
  • Personalized SimaPro Training. Learning a powerful LCA platform can feel overwhelming at first. That’s why we provide hands-on training designed to help users quickly build confidence and competence within SimaPro. Rather than relying solely on generic training materials, participants have the opportunity to learn from experienced practitioners who understand real-world LCA challenges.
    Our training programs focus on practical application, helping users understand:

    • Project setup and model development
    • Data selection and management
    • Impact assessment methodologies
    • Interpretation of results
    • Best practices for efficient workflow management
  • US-Based Technical Support. Questions inevitably arise when implementing new software. Our clients receive dedicated technical support from a North American team that understands both the software and the practical realities of conducting LCAs. In addition to dedicated onboarding support, our team remains available to provide responsive assistance during U.S. business hours.
    Support includes assistance with:

    • Software installation and licensing
    • Troubleshooting technical issues
    • Database management
    • Model configuration questions
    • General SimaPro functionality
  • Expert LCA Guidance. Perhaps the greatest advantage of working with our team is direct access to LCA expertise. Many challenges in life cycle assessment are not software problems, they are methodological questions. Which database should be used? How should allocation be handled? What impact assessment method is most appropriate? How should results be interpreted and communicated? Our clients have the opportunity to work directly with experienced LCA practitioners who can help navigate these decisions and avoid common pitfalls. This guidance can save valuable time, improve study quality, and increase confidence in results.

Beyond SimaPro: Access to a Full-Service Sustainability Consulting Team

While many organizations initially come to us for SimaPro, they often discover that our greatest value extends far beyond software licensing and support. As a sustainability consulting firm, we help organizations navigate complex environmental challenges, develop credible sustainability strategies, and generate actionable insights through life cycle assessment. Our team brings practical experience across a wide range of industries and sustainability initiatives, allowing us to support clients at every stage of their journey. Our consulting services include:

  • Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): Life Cycle Assessment provides a comprehensive, data-driven view of environmental impacts across a product or system’s entire life cycle. LTS supports organizations with practitioner-led expertise, North American-specific datasets, and ISO-aligned methodologies to ensure results are transparent, consistent, and defensible.
  • Carbon Accounting: LTS supports both product-level carbon footprints and organizational greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories, including Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions assessments. Our approach is grounded in life cycle thinking and aligned with GHG Protocol and emerging disclosure requirements.
  • Climate Reporting: LTS helps organizations translate environmental data into structured ESG, EPR, ISSB, and product-level disclosures. We ensure reporting is transparent, audit-ready, and aligned with evolving regulatory and customer expectations.
  • Product Environmental Footprinting: Product Environmental Footprinting evaluates multiple environmental impact categories across a product’s full life cycle using LCA methods. LTS supports alignment with EU PEF, OEF, and EF 3.1 frameworks for consistent and credible assessment.
  • Sustainability Data Governance: LTS helps organizations establish structured governance frameworks that improve consistency, traceability, and quality of sustainability data. This ensures environmental data is reliable and scalable across reporting and decision-making systems.
  • Reporting Readiness: LTS designs reporting systems that transform structured sustainability data into repeatable ESG, EPR, and ISSB-aligned disclosures. This reduces reporting burden while improving consistency and auditability.
  • Sustainability Strategy & Program Design: LTS helps organizations connect sustainability initiatives into a unified program spanning LCA, carbon accounting, reporting, and governance. This enables scalable sustainability capability across teams and business units.

When you choose us as your SimaPro provider, you gain more than access to software and databases, you gain access to a team of sustainability professionals who can help you tackle challenges as they arise. Whether you need a quick technical answer, guidance on a methodological decision, support with an EPD, or a partner to execute a complex LCA study, our team is available to help. This combination of software expertise and consulting experience allows us to provide a level of support that extends well beyond traditional software distribution. For many of our clients, that partnership becomes one of the most valuable aspects of working with us.

When you choose us as your SimaPro provider, you receive:

  • Access to the DATASMART Database with North American data
  • Practical SimaPro user training
  • US-based technical support
  • Direct access to experienced LCA practitioners
  • Personalized guidance tailored to your organization’s needs
  • A dedicated partner committed to your long-term success

SimaPro is a powerful platform. With the right support behind it, it becomes an even more valuable tool for driving sustainability decisions and creating meaningful impact. If you’re considering SimaPro or would like to learn more about the services available through our team, we’d be happy to discuss how we can help support your organization’s sustainability goals.

DATASMART 2026 Is Now Available

Read more

Comparing Paper and Digital Patient Information Leaflets: An LCA Example

As the pharmaceutical industry explores ways to reduce environmental impact without compromising patient safety or access to information, digital solutions are gaining momentum. One such solution is the shift from traditional paper patient information leaflets (PILs) to digital e-leaflets, also known as electronic product information (ePI).

In May 2025, Long Trail Sustainability completed a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) comparing the environmental impacts of paper patient information leaflets with their digital counterparts viewed on a smartphone. The study found that e-leaflets have significantly lower environmental impacts than paper leaflets, highlighting their potential as a more sustainable option at scale.

Patient information leaflets are the paper inserts included in medication packaging, providing essential details such as drug interactions, side effects, and storage requirements. The LCA compared a standard paper PIL with an e-leaflet (ePI) accessed on a smartphone, reflecting real-world patient use. Data for the assessment was sourced from Takeda and other global pharmaceutical companies, as well as primary literature and reputable secondary sources.

This post shares a high-level overview of the assessment and its outcomes. For readers interested in the full methodology, assumptions, and impact results, the complete white paper is available for download. Even more methodology details can be found within DATASMART 2026 process documentation; Check out the below.

Download the full whitepaper here

 

From LCA Study to Practical Tools in DATASMART 2026

While the original paper leaflet model was developed using European assumptions, it has since been updated to incorporate U.S. electricity grids and transportation data, making the analysis more representative of North American conditions.

Beyond comparing paper and digital formats, this study also enabled Long Trail Sustainability to expand the life cycle data available to practitioners. As a result of this work, three new life cycle inventory (LCI) processes are now available to LTS customers in the DATASMART database:

  • Paper Leaflet / US S
  • e-Leaflet viewed on smartphone / US S
  • e-Leaflet viewed on smartphone (reduced view time) / US S

These datasets allow practitioners to make science-backed decisions when choosing between printing or distributing information via smartphone/computer, supporting more informed sustainability decisions across pharmaceutical products, packaging systems, and beyond.

 

Learn More

This project serves as a practical LCA example, demonstrating how comparative assessments can inform digital transformation while also generating reusable life cycle data. Detailed system boundaries, modeling assumptions, and full impact results are documented in the white paper.

Download the white paper to explore the full LCA and see how these datasets were developed and applied.

LCA at Scale: From Complexity to Clarity

Scaling LCA Without the Chaos: Break Down Data Silos, Unlock Sustainability Insights

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a gold standard for sustainability reporting; It’s comprehensive, science-based, and foundational for informed decision-making. But in practice, scaling LCA across an organization often leads to complexity, not clarity.

What begins as a robust, well-defined study can quickly unravel into:

  • Fragmented data scattered across teams, suppliers, and systems
  • Time-consuming data transformation and verification
  • One-off models with limited reusability
  • Results that don’t resonate with non-LCA experts or decision-makers

The outcome? More time spent managing data than interpreting it, and critical insights remain siloed, missing the agility to shape design, procurement, or strategic planning.

The Hidden Cost of Siloed Information

  • 6 in 10 employees struggle to access the knowledge they need to do their jobs effectively
  • U.S. businesses lose an estimated $3.1 trillion annually due to poor data quality
  • Employees waste an average of: 5 hours/week waiting for information, 8 hours/week working inefficiently, 6 hours/week duplicating efforts

These inefficiencies are classic symptoms of data silos, leading to:

  • Duplication of effort across teams
  • Inconsistent or inaccurate insights
  • Missed opportunities from inaccessible data
  • Increased operational costs
  • Limited collaboration across departments

From Siloed to Shared: Building a Data-Driven Culture

Solving these challenges requires more than just better tools, it requires a cultural shift toward data democratization. Data democratization is the process of making data available across all levels of the enterprise. But it’s more than access, it’s about enabling every employee to work confidently with data through data literacy, storytelling, and easy-to-use tools.

This shift empowers all employees to become “Citizen Data Scientists”, capable of extracting insights and contributing to data-informed decisions, with guidance from data experts when needed. We must move from a model of Data Aristocracy, where insights are confined to a small group of specialists, to a Data Democracy, where every data citizen is empowered to work with and benefit from data.

Enabling Scalable, Impactful LCA

To truly scale LCA across an organization, the solution lies in a combination of tools, governance, and culture:

Data Governance: A streamlined and secure pipeline for sustainability data
Configurable LCA Models: Parameterized, reusable, and scalable to reduce one-off efforts
SimaPro Synergy: A user-friendly platform that allows non-LCA experts to engage with data and insights
Data Democratization: Make sustainability data accessible and meaningful to all
Training and Education: Build data literacy and foster a culture of data storytelling

The Bottom Line

Sustainable decisions require more than data, they require data that is accessible, interpretable, and actionable by all. By breaking down silos and enabling data democracy, organizations can elevate LCA from a compliance tool to a strategic enabler.

Let’s build Synergy, not silos.

 

LCA for Enterprise-wide Scalability

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) isn’t just a sustainability buzzword; it’s a strategic business tool that offers 360-degrees of upsides, spanning from financial, to logistics and operations, to R&D, to marketing and branding. LCA offers a comprehensive view of environmental impacts across a product’s life cycle, from raw material extraction to end-of-life. This insight is essential for informed decision-making, especially now as consumers, investors, and regulators increasingly demand transparency and accountability.

Understanding life cycle impacts is a key to lean business operations by uncovering hidden inefficiencies, reducing waste, and optimizing resources. LCA acts as a risk control by highlighting potential regulatory or reputational threats early. LCA strengthens brand value by enabling credible environmental claims backed by data, giving businesses a competitive edge in eco-conscious markets.

As LCA practitioners, how do we get this across to the executive levels? How do we let our non-sustainability peers know that there is value behind our reports, and that we can enact data-backed enhancements to the lifecycle of a product? SimaPro Synergy, PRé Sustainability’s new product, offers scalable LCA calculations, data integration, and transparent environmental metrics with the aim of empowering companies to incorporate sustainability insights into business strategy and daily decision-making. Stay tuned for more posts in this SimaPro Synergy Series as we explore how to effectively prepare your organization for an enterprise-wide LCA solution. We’ll cover key topics like data governance and configurable LCA modeling.

Also catch us at ACLCA 2025 in September where we will further discuss SimaPro Synergy and enterprise-wide LCA solutions.

Online Course Header

Just Launched! On-Demand Intro to LCA and SimaPro Course

Read more

Client Spotlight: TemperPack

Company Description: TemperPack manufactures sustainable high-performance packaging for cold chain shipments. The company’s ClimaCell® thermal liners are used by leading meal kit brands and other companies that ship fresh and frozen food and temperature sensitive medical treatments to people’s homes.

Why is environmental sustainability important to TemperPack?

The TemperPack team is committed to smarter packaging for a sustainable future and has been since its inception. Our founders recognized a massive opportunity back in 2015 to create widely recyclable solutions that would replace toxic incumbent thermal materials such as EPS foam, which is often known as Styrofoam®.

As e-commerce continues to surge, so has the demand for plastic packaging. As a result, more and more plastic waste is ending up in landfills and incinerators, which has severe consequences for our water, our soil, our climate, and our health and well-being. Packaging manufacturers today have a responsibility to provide consumers with alternatives to single-use plastics.

At TemperPack, we are working to do just that by designing our products with better materials and better end-of-life scenarios. Our team uses material science and high-tech manufacturing to make packaging designed to meet the needs of an economy increasingly reliant on e-commerce and a planet in urgent need of environmentally friendlier packaging.

Samantha Burch, Sustainability Analyst

What were some of the company’s drivers for conducting an LCA?

One of our top priorities was to understand our products’ direct impact on the environment with more depth and precision. Doing so would allow us to identify and mitigate our greatest “hot spots”, phases within our product’s life cycle that contribute the most negative environmental impacts.

Our main objectives in conducting this study were to 1) make informed product innovation decisions, 2) provide our stakeholders withmore reliable communications about our product’s impact, 3) generate real-time impact reports demonstrating the impact our clients are making by using a more sustainable product in their supply chain, and 4) build a model we could use as a benchmark for future assessments.

What type of LCA did you conduct (e.g. screening, full, full with critical review)?

We conducted a full ISO-compliant single product LCA with a critical review. TemperPack wanted to establish a baseline environmental footprint of its flagship product, ClimaCell® thermal insulation liners. We analyzed the ClimaCell® system from cradle-to-grave, which means we analyzed the system from the raw material acquisition stage to the system’s end-of-life.

Sometimes people have preconceived notions of the environmental impacts of their products and LCA reveals a different story. Were you surprised by any of the findings from your LCA? 

Our team was surprised to learn the extent to which the materials we use to package our ClimaCell liners has on our total product footprint. It turns out the shipping materials we use, which include gaylord boxes and the shrink wrap, make up about 27% of the total kg CO2e emitted. This finding demonstrates how important our own packaging decisions are to the whole LCA pie and to our company’s overall impact.

Nearly 75% of our emissions can be directly attributed to our supply chain. This proportion of impact is typical for many manufacturers; one popular stat even notes that a typical consumer company’s supply chain accounts for 80%+ of its total GHG emissions. While the 75% is not necessarily surprising, it does emphasize the need to examine each stage of our supply chain and implement efficiencies where possible (i.e. addressing and reducing Scope 3 emissions).

TemperPack collaborated with PRe to develop an integrated reporting system using SimaPro API. Tell us more about this project.

Yes, we worked closely with PRe’s SimaPro Digital Solutions team to build a custom reporting solution. Prior to this solution, we built custom impact reports for our customers manually, which proved time-consuming and inefficient. We’re thrilled about this automated solution, as it helps us simplify and streamline the report-making process.

To provide our customers with these insights into their environmental footprints, we’ve been building an app that integrates actual customer data from our Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software and passes it into SimaPro’s beta Application Programming Interface (API). With essentially the “click of a button”, we can produce branded reports that pull calculations directly from our LCA models.

In addition to being one of the pilot users of the API and providing PRé with feedback, we worked together with PRé to bring new API features to life (reporting, bulk calculations, etc.) for the broader PRé customer community to use down the road.

How do you plan on continuing to use LCA in the future?

The beauty of an LCA, particularly a single product LCA, is that they’re built to be iterative. This recent study paves the way for additional assessments and our team is eager to take that next step.

We will continue to build both comparative LCA models as well as new models for future TemperPack products. It’s important we continue using this robust tool to best understand our products, which in turn helps us assure continued innovation.

What were some of the benefits of working with Long Trail Sustainability?

LTS was a great partner throughout the process. 

The LTS team helped us get started with a SimaPro trial. We were pleased with the software and its robust set of databases. We moved forward with a full license and ultimately commissioned LTS to carry out a concurrent critical review of our single product LCA model and report against ISO 14040 and 14044 standards.

Prior to finalizing the model, we also had the chance to take advantage of LTS’s LCA course offerings. Shelly, our LTS project consultant, was an expert resource; sitting through her Applied LCA in SimaPro Online Training Class proved greatly beneficial. Not only was the course a helpful introduction into how to navigate SimaPro, it also included 1-1 time with Shelly to help address any of our follow-up questions (of which there were a few!).

Climate Class 01: Course Review

This is Climate Class, our monthly email series with the Germantown Laundromat and BEST to enroll in a sustainable future by learning the effects of our lifestyles on the planet, we implement simple everyday practices to live a cleaner life.  In 2020 we broke down each carbon emitter that’s led to our current crisis (you can read those here). This year we’re recommitting to putting our knowledge to practice. And what better way to do so than to spotlight some brands, businesses, humans that are leading by example.  Who better to start with than ourselves. 
Read more

Climate Class 06: That’s Your Business

Read more

Recorded webinar | SimaPro data management

On Dec. 8, 2020, we teamed up with our partner PRé Sustainability in the Netherlands to share the basics and our best practices for managing your data in SimaPro desktop.

We start with giving you an overview of SimaPro architecture, where to find database files and additional data libraries that are not included (by default) in SimaPro. We then delve into how to carry out updates, backups, and the basics of data import/export. Finally we share with you handy tips and highlight some not-so-obvious features.

View the recording here.
Read more
About

Company
Partners
Careers
Testimonials

Contact
Sustainability Guidance

Expert Advisory and 1:1 Consulting
Product Sustainability
PEF, EPD & PCR, SPD
Sustainability Management
Supply Chain
Life Cycle Assessment
Screening LCA
Single Product LCA
Comparative LCA
Critical Review
Carbon Footprint

Software

SimaPro
SimaPro Desktop
SimaPro Cloud
SimaPro Demo
SimaPro Features
Databases
Assessment Methods
Technical Requirements
SimaPro Commercial Plans
SimaPro Education Plans

Custom Development

DATASMART

Download DATASMART
Package Manual
EULA
DATASMART Webinar
Submit Data

Training

Certificate Programs
Courses
Live Class Calendar
Custom Training

Resources

LCA Examples
LTS News
SimaPro Technical Support FAQ
Install SimaPro

Subscribe
SimaPro Tech Support