How are eco-costs calculated?

It’s a complex calculation (made simple for the end-consumer) because we are essentially converting carbon footprint, resource scarcity, impact on biodiversity and impact on human health into the same ‘metric’. 

Using a Life Cycle Assessment method, the individual results for each separate category are called ‘midpoint indicators’. The eco-cost system used in Pickler was created by the foundation Sustainability Impact Metrics (a spin-off of the Technical University of Delft). It adds a monetary value to each midpoint indicator, allowing us to add up the values into four main categories. When we add these up, we get the total environmental cost of a product. This gives us a simple, digestible figure.