Leading the way with calculating the Footprint and identifying opportunities to reduce it is just the start. A reduced footprint is still a Footprint, and it is ultimately impossible to achieve a Footprint of zero, so we need a framework to go beyond negative impact reduction in order to explore the endless positive potential that exists outside of the Footprint.
To support truly transformative manufacturing, LPC provides companies with the methodology to measure the positive impacts they actively cause (Handprints) in direct relation to their product’s negative impacts (Footprints). Using the same underlying LCA data and modeling, the positive impacts that result from a Handprint are calculated and expressed in the same units as the Footprint categories they correspond to. Within LPC, Life Cycle Net Positive is currently required to achieve the Net Positive Water, Energy and Carbon Imperatives. Where the manufacturer can claim to have created Handprints greater than its products’ respective Footprints on an annual basis, the manufacturer can consider its impact to be measurably Net Positive for those impact categories.
Enterprise Handprints
While many Handprints are product-related, companies also create Handprints through actions that generate impacts outside the scope of the life cycles of products that they sell. These can be considered “enterprise” Handprints instead of product-based Handprints. In the case of enterprise Handprints, the question arises of whether and how such impacts outside the scope of a product’s Footprint might be properly assigned or allocated to one of its products.
Product Net Positivity and Enterprise (or Organizational) Net Positivity are different things. Organizations, as actors, are Net Positive when their Handprints are larger than their Footprints for a given impact category. Products, as inanimate objects, are Net Positive in cases where their use and end-of-life management can be shown to create more good than harm, or to reduce or prevent more negative impacts than they cause. As an example, a photovoltaic panel’s use phase displaces (and thus prevents the generation of) electricity from fossil fuel combustion. LCA can show that this prevents more negative impacts than are caused by its production and end-of-life.
To be given credit for having a Net Positive life cycle, it must be shown that the product’s use truly does displace more harm than its production causes. If the photovoltaics are used to supply electricity that would not otherwise be supplied without their production, then the Net Positivity of the life cycle is in doubt. A product that could be used in a Net Positive way has Net Positive life cycle potential; a product that is used in this way has a Net Positive life cycle.
Identifying and Vetting Handprint Ideas
So how does one create a Handprint? At its simplest, there are two ways to think about how Handprints are made:
- Preventing or avoiding Footprints that would otherwise have occurred, which includes reducing the magnitude of Footprints that occur, relative to what their magnitude would otherwise have been; and
- Creating positive benefits which would not otherwise have occurred, which are measurable in Footprint units.
These positive impacts exist outside of the business-as-usual scenario described previously and improve upon it. Handprints measure the impacts that manufacturers can generate across the product life cycle relative to BAU, such as harvesting more water and generating more energy than was required to make it. Manufacturers can create Handprints through their own product manufacturing processes, as well as by influencing positive impacts in their upstream supply chains. The possibilities for what makes a positive impact are many, and manufacturers are encouraged to explore widely to identify opportunities to create the greatest potential benefits using scarce resources.
Opportunities for Handprinting can be found both inside and outside of the scope of the life
cycle of the product pursuing certification. Looking upstream, if the manufacturer helps to cause reductions of impacts at hot spots in its supply chain, this will certainly bring Footprint reductions, but it could also bring additional Handprints beyond the scope of the cradle-to-gate footprint. How so? Most companies sell their goods and services to more than one customer, so this will be true for most hot spots in the supply chain of Living Products. If the manufacturer of the Living Product works to reduce the Footprint of one of its key suppliers, the reductions to the supplier’s Footprint that occur outside the scope of the Living Product Footprint (e.g., that occur in the scope of the goods or services sold by the supplier that are used to produce other products) all count as Handprints for the manufacturer of the Living Product.
When manufacturers achieve Footprint reductions by reducing the on-site impacts of product manufacturing, they can also leverage these Footprint reduction steps into possible Handprints. For example, manufacturers can switch to greener or lower-impact materials and/or energy source inputs to make the product, and/or use these material or resource inputs more efficiently.
After realizing this success, manufacturers can share successful and proven sustainable innovations (Footprint reductions) within its supply chain network and potentially even beyond supply chain actors to include businesses in its regional economy, businesses in its industry, or consumers at large.
Downstream life cycle phases, including distribution (transportation, wholesaling and retailing), the use phase and end-of-life management, also present opportunities to create Handprints. Customer engagement and the use phase, for example, can create massive ripple effects as customers spread behavioral changes inspired by the manufacturer to the people they interact with, and as customers’ engagement with Handprinting grows from one action to many.
When looking downstream, it is important to not accidentally skip over the distribution phase. For some products, such as furniture and food, the distribution phase can make a surprisingly large contribution to total life cycle burdens—and offers a key place to look for Handprint opportunities. With its end-of-use management, can a company increase recycling of its product, and perhaps of similar products manufactured by others? The benefits of doing so will contribute to its Handprint.
Ultimately, Handprints have the potential to create real and demonstrated ripple effects that spread beyond the boundaries of the life cycles of the Living Product itself.
Though ILFI encourages exploratory thinking and iteration to imagine the most impactful footprint reduction actions possible, there are some identified constraints that, if considered early in the planning process, can inform and focus efforts toward achieving Net Positive Life Cycle impacts and of course, LPC certification. At this point, it is best to establish some of these parameters and prompting questions to set the process up for success.
