Målbar: Measuring environmental impact
Målbar has created a highly advanced digital tool to measure the climate impact of products. The uniquely user-friendly tool allows companies to screen products on three precision levels, making it possible to obtain useful results without completing the traditional resource heavy life cycle assessment. Thereby, Målbar is helping companies in the furniture and design industries measure the carbon footprint of their products and use the results as a point of departure for making more responsible design and production choices. More than merely a calculator; the tool contains vast amounts of data about the impact of different materials, production methods, packaging, transport, waste, and much more – made readily available to the user.
Measuring environmental impact
Often it is difficult to know exactly how a product affects the climate.
- Is transportation distances a very important factor?
- How do you make sure that recycling materials do not lead to more emissions than new ones?
- Which natural materials are good choices, and which are worse than fossil-based?
- When is the process of production more significant than the choice of material?
- Is traditional craft a better climate solution than high-tech production?
These questions and many more can be answered in a few minutes by the Målbar Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool.
What is unique about the Målbar screening tool, is that it can calculate on all products made in industrial production. Even the difficult furniture and fashion products containing natural materials can be assessed by the tool’s advanced algorithms.
A manual life cycle assessment of a single product may take a very long time and can be extremely costly. The Målbar tool cannot calculate to the same accuracy but it can provide a fast qualified estimate. That is usually enough to point out which parts of a lifecycle are most important.
The reason why Målbar provides such fast results is that when there is a lack of data, the tool will use conservative estimates instead. This still allows for a trustworthy result, but at the same time encourages the user to investigate all aspects of the supply chain. And the more you know about a product, the more precise the result will be. This also gives an incentive to manage the supply chain more carefully and make more responsible choices.
About Målbar
Målbar was founded in April 2020 by two former managers from the furniture business, Jakob Aaen and Anders Koefoed. They developed the tool two years before creating the company. Their purpose was to make climate impact from furniture and design products measurable. The near goal is to obtain third-party verification and expand to other product sectors. Later to be able to measure other sustainability aspects than “just” climate as for example biodiversity, toxicity, and other environmental factors. Today, Målbar is utilized by a significant amount of the Danish furniture brands and suppliers and the clientele is currently expanding to international customers.