From Data to Impact: Using LCAs & EPDs to Drive Real Sustainability (with Sara Gripstrand)

Below is a transcript of our discussion with Sara Gripstrand, sustainability manager at Lintex.

We recorded this discussion as part of our Sustainable by Design podcast.

In this episode, we discussed how Life Cycle Analysis helped Sara build a robust sustainability roadmap.
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Greg: Today I'm with Sara Gripstrand, and we're going to talk about LCA lifecycle analysis in furniture and how you can leverage LCA, to improve the sustainability of your brand. Welcome to the show, Sara.‍

Sara: Thank you very much.‍

Greg:  Could you start, Sara, by introducing yourself to the audience?

Sara:  I am a sustainability manager at Lintex. I've been with the company for nearly four years, and I'm responsible for our sustainability work, and I work very closely with, my colleagues in the purchasing, product development, sales and marketing departments (almost everybody is involved in the sustainability work).

Greg: Sounds great. And can you tell us a bit more about Lintex?

Sara: We are selling writing boards, and acoustic products. I dare to say that we are the European leader in writing boards. We have a very specific niche, and that is that we combine writing boards with acoustic properties.

That makes us quite unique. And we saw that a couple of years ago, we transitioned from regular whiteboards, you know, the white ones that you can see in schools all over. We transitioned to high design products with lots of colors and lots of different fabric, and, the sales really took off.

So now we export to all the Nordic countries all over Europe. We have agents and our own companies there, and we're also exporting to the US now. So that's interesting. It's been a quite a ride.

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Greg: That's great. And for people who don't know what this product looks like, I recommend you to check their website because it's definitely not what you would expect from a whiteboard.I was lucky enough to see your products at the Workspace Expo in Paris. And they look great. It's not only about having something to write on or to have more acoustic comfort, it's also a beautiful product.

Sara: And, what's interesting is that we have, you know, all the tech companies and all the large banks they're buying from us. So it's really, but it's analog writing boards. So nothing that you can, no, nothing digital at all.

Greg: But I think writing boards have been part of the startup life for years. So I'm not surprised that we can find your products everywhere, including startups and tech companies, because I think it's part of the way people work there. Right. So, today we're here to talk about LCA lifecycle analysis. Could you start by maybe defining what is lifecycle analysis?

Sara: A lifecycle analysis that is: you make an assessment of the entire product from cradle to grave, you dig really deep, and you collect data from the entire supply chain. So you, you dig as deep down as you can into the raw materials production. And then you follow the materials through your own production, all the transports, and then what happens during use and in the end of life. So it's a complete mapping of the environmental impact of your products.

Greg: I know at Lintex you've been using LCA for years. I was curious to know: what is your company history with LCA and if you know, what was the initial objective when Lintex starting using LCA?

Sara: I started in 2021, and then I was the first sustainability manager here. And we decided that we were going to do things for real. We were going to take a systematic approach to sustainability. I mean, before I started, the company had been doing great things. For example, put solar cells on the roof.

So we were already net producers of energy. We produce more than we use. And I remember our CEO telling me, that he thought we were like done. We had the solar panels, and I was like, no, we're just getting started. And then we decided together with all the management that we were going to do the LCAs to really understand, for us as a company, our climate impact in total. S we just jumped into it, and it was hard work in the beginning. But we had two objectives really. First, as I said internally, to understand everything so we would be able to do the right things. Focus on where it mattered the most.

And then of course, external. We'd been getting questions from customers for a couple of years. It started in Norway actually, and then Sweden, UK, Denmark, been starting to ask, so it was on. But we wanted to be proactive and do it before it was a must.

Greg: That sounds great. It's very interesting because it started as something that was internal, but the timing was also right because in the end it also matched some questions from your clients as well. Sara, I was also curious to talk with you because I know you were doing LCA, but you're also generating documents that we called EPDs (Environmental Product Declarations).

I was curious first to understand the connection between LCA and EPD and the differences between LCA and EPD.

Sara: Yeah, that's really important because the LCA is the basis for the EPD. It's a really long report where, as I said, everything is mapped and everything is reported, all our suppliers and where they buy their products from.

So it's about 40, can be about 40, 50 pages, really, really detailed. But the EPD is a summary LCA and the summary, it's 10 pages with lots of figures and numbers and stuff. But it's supposed to be a way to communicate the LCA, and easy to read, though we've learned that it's not. So we have had to help our customers to interpret it.

But what, what also is important and has to be mentioned is that the EPD must be third-party verified. You have to sign up with an EPD program operator. The one we have in Sweden is called EPD International, and they won't let you publish anything unless it's a third-party verifier that has reviewed everything, the lifecycle analysis, certifications for energy use, and so on.

So, to summarize, an EPD is a third party verified short version of the LCA, and that's also what our clients ask for.

Greg: That sounds great. And just as a side note, if, people want to see what an EPD from your company look like, they can visit Environdec. This is a website of the program operator, and then if you type in, Lintex, you are gonna find all their EPDs.

Which is great because it's also public data, so anyone who's interested in your product, they don't even have to contact you. They can directly go to the website and check for themselves.

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Sara: Yes

Greg: Great. So you told us that you've been doing LCA and generating EPDs for a few years now. Could you tell us what were the main benefits you got from using LCA and how did it influence, the sustainability roadmap at Lintex?

Sara: There are many ways that it influenced our own sustainability work. I would say it's the foundation of everything we do now because without the LCAs we had not been so sure that we were doing the right things.

So our first ones, they were really eye-openers. We discovered that about 80% of the products, the climate impact came from materials and components, and only about 7% from transport. So we shifted our focus. We've been talking a lot about logistics just in the beginning, but then we realized that it was materials that we had to prioritize.

And we went deeper down. We looked at data for each material. For instance, extruded aluminum. It's a type of aluminum that we use for frames and brackets. It accounted for 20% of Lintex's total climate footprint for the entire company. Then we realized: "Okay, this is where we have to focus first, because if we fix this, it's a big bite of our own entire CO2 impact".

I didn't mention that, but the LCAs also made it possible for us to calculate our own scope 3 with real data. So we have our entire scope 1, 2, and 3 for the greenhouse gas protocol then, so that was, interesting. And then we also started working with our suppliers based on the really deep analysis that we did of the materials. So we looked where is it most important to switch to renewable energy, depending on the material. Where is it most important to start using more recycled material? So we have had really good dialogues, and we're pushing the suppliers to also change because that will have a large impact for us and our clients as well, of course.

Greg: I have to stress this, Sara. This is so interesting and important. When I speak with sustainability managers in the industry, I feel that sometimes it's very difficult to prioritize things because you have, let's say the CEO pushing for logistics, like you said, then you have the people working in the assembly factory, they're going to tell you, "yeah, we need to switch the energy sources", and you are now in a position where you can actually have a very cold opinion about things based on data, and you can actually drive a roadmap that's really based on science. That is, I guess you can't really argue with this kind of metrics, and I think it's important to stress that because it's so different from all the people who don't have this kind of data. So it's amazing.

Sara: yes, it's a lot of guessing if you don't have the data, and I mean, you have a certain amount of money to spend, and then you want to spend it on the right things. So you get the bang for the buck.

Greg: Exactly.

Sara: And, and the LCAs also made us think very differently in product design and material selection.

We know what materials are heavy on the climate impact and also on other environmental aspects, of course. So, now we try to change product design and product construction to decrease our footprint. So it has really stuck on our strategies, on our entire strategies for the company.

Greg: And, that's so interesting as well. Is there any example you could share of a material that you were able to switch or replace by something that had a lower impact?

Sara: We started with the aluminum, and we managed to trace a supplier that only used hydropower for producing the raw material, and that cut the climate impact, by two thirds for that material. And in turn, that made Lintex climate impact a lot lower. So when we measured our scope 1 and 2, 3 for 2024, we had decreased our impact by 40% compared to 2019, which is huge. And the aluminum is one part of it, but we've done other smaller things as well.

So, it's really important, and I mean, fabrics, wool for example, it has a large climate impact, but we talk to our suppliers, and they are aware of it, and they are having lots of initiatives going on.

Greg: That's fascinating because again, a few things to stress that are very important I think.

First, you are talking about the total impact of the company. When you check sustainability reports in the furniture industry, unfortunately, most of these reports focus on scopes 1 and 2, while Scope 3 is usually the biggest source of emissions for furniture companies. And also about the aluminum, what's interesting is that you were able to keep the same material so you don't have to start from scratch. You found an alternative that probably has the same, physical properties, resistance, durability, etc. But with a much lower impact. That's very encouraging for all the people who listen to this episode.

Sara: But it is also hard because there are limitations. In some countries, even in Europe, it's not possible to buy green energy and get guarantees of origin for it. Sometimes we thought that it would be easy, but we realized it's not. So, sometimes it feels like we're waiting for the surrounding world to catch up.

Greg: That makes a lot of sense. You know, we discussed LCA, and then we mentioned EPDs. You told me that LCA, it had a major impact on how you design products. It allowed you to decrease your impact quickly and dramatically. I was wondering what business value you got from the EPDs themselves.

Sara: Well, with the EPDs, the business value is that we can communicate CO2 impact with our clients, and we can be confident since they're third party verified. It's just not something that we've made up. It's a professional that has reviewed it and approved it. Many of our customers actually require EPDs now in public tenders in Sweden and Norway.

It's a prerequisite. You have need to have it.

And in certifications like LEED or BREEAM for buildings or projects, you get points for having them. And we actually have clients that have said that they've switched from competitors to us because they need the CO2 impact for the products. So, we have had real examples that it also has made business for us.

Greg: Which is great because, usually when you talk about sustainability to furniture companies, for them they see sustainability as just a cost.

But I think with EPDs, you can really turn sustainability to your advantage in the way that you can prove that you're doing better than your competitors, or at least you can prove that you're really doing something. And this can translate into more contracts, especially like you said, I think in the public sector. But I've heard it was the case also for large companies like banks, et cetera. They also pay attention to EPDs more and more.

Sara: Yes, they definitely do. I mean, it's large companies and the public sector, so far. And I mean, many companies, they have to report their scope 3, we have CSRD now. And of course, many people doing other types of sustainability reporting need this data.

And so now we are integrating it into our product configurator. We're integrating the CO2 footprint in our business system and our product configurator. So our clients will be able to go to our webpage and pick up the data. We have up to 60,000 articles, but since we were making it automatic in the business system, it's going to work.

Greg: You anticipated my next question. It's so impressive to be able to calculate LCAs for so many products. Again, people have to realize that, 10 years ago, you would have had to do all these LCAs manually. It would have cost thousands of euros, to get just one LCA out the door. So I think it's amazing that you were able to do it for all the products, automate it and share the information with the clients in real time.

Sara: It's because our business system has built in this function, not entire EPDs, but we can use it for CO2 data.

Greg: That's great. And out of curiosity, is CO2 still the biggest indicator that your clients check?

Sara: Yeah. This is what they ask for. For us, it's the most important environmental impact. So it makes sense.

Greg: That makes sense indeed. So we've talked about all your successes. I'm also curious to understand how you got there. Did you face any specific challenge when you developed your first EPDs?

Sara: It was quite hard to collect the data. We spent lots of time ourselves communicating with the suppliers.

We sent them Excel sheets that they filled out, but they had never done that before. So it was lots of explanation, communication back and forth because we wanted to know what type of energy they used, how much waste they had, what chemicals they used, if they had any other remissions during production.

So it was hard. Some of them didn't want to release the data, so we had to do it confidentially. And some of them we actually had to help to really guide through the process. But once we have the data, it's quite easy for us, but because we have 15-20 suppliers of our main materials, so we can do the work in this way, since we don't have that many.

So it was hard, but also, I think we got to learn the supply chain in a much better way than we had before. We learned about our suppliers and where they buy their products from, what types of materials there are in all the products. And we also learned which suppliers are forward-thinking within sustainability. So it's been very useful for us since this new dialogue that we created with the suppliers in all different matters.

Greg: What sounds interesting, I'd like to pause for a moment on that. It sounds like you're using first party data for everything is that correct?

Sara: Mm-hmm. Yeah. But I mean, not the all the way down to the mines, but definitely for our suppliers and the transports and the packaging that they use.

Greg: For people who are not aware of, how you conduct an LCA, you can do it two ways. You can use average data from databases, which is usually interesting, but not as precise as using primary data. So, it's interesting that you were able to get supplier-specific data points. I think it makes the data even more reliable, and actionable also on your side.

Sara: Yes. And further down, we've used the Ecoinvent database.

Greg: I'm curious to understand how you convinced your suppliers to cooperate. Was it something that was easy to convince them to contribute to this work? What kind of arguments can you use to get your suppliers on board?

Sara: There were suppliers that didn't want to be included. But they often had these products like paint or glue stuff that we could use models for.

But the other suppliers, I think they were also interested because we shared the data with them. The data that our consultant calculated, we shared it with our suppliers because, I mean, they were also interested in their climate footprint, so they got an analysis for free, which was good for them.

But I also think that we have good relations with our suppliers. We work with them on a daily basis. So everybody's keen on having a good relationship.

Greg: It's not as if you just discovered who are your suppliers. You had a preexisting relationship, and that's a great start point here.

Sara: Definitely. And even if they said that they, very few of them had had these questions before. Most of them were new to it, but they also they realized that this was coming. That this is work they have to do. So it just happened to be that we were the first client asking them.

Greg: It makes sense. You told me that initially you hired consultants, or it sounded like you had consultants. Do you have the same setup today, or how do you run your LCA at such a big scale with like 60,000 different products?

Sara: Oh no, we have the data, the A1 to A3, the first data for 60,000 articles, but it's the same materials in these products.

Maybe it's a different color of the glass, or a different color of the fabric. We had consultants, and they helped us with the EPDs. I think it's about 15 of them for our major product groups. And that covered almost all our materials. And then we also use, an EPD generator, LCA.no that's connected to EPD Norway. And there we can do our own EPDs now. I think we've published maybe 10 there. So that's good. So currently we actually have two systems, which is not optimal. We'll see what happens, in the future. But at the moment it's two.

Greg: And what's reassuring, about what you said is even if you have like thousand products in your catalog, it doesn't mean that you are going to have to collect 60,000 different data points because I guess there are some common elements between the products.

Sara: So for us that we have combinations of different, we have 24 colors of glass and we have very many different fabrics, different color of the fabrics. So it adds up to, many article numbers. But I mean, it is difficult because you're not allowed to have them in the EPD. We mean that we base the numbers on EPD data or LCA data that's third party verified.

So we claim that it's the other products as well, but there are lots of things happening at the moment, so we'll see how this evolves.

Greg: I have a question about the cost and ROI of the LCA efforts. Do you have a ballpark estimate of, how much your company had to invest in, in tools, consultants, and what kind of additional revenue, this brought for the company?

Sara: There is definitely an upfront cost, and we wanted to do it. We wanted to have all our materials included because if we didn't do it properly, then we wouldn't be able to create the roadmap for ourselves. So that's why we did the EPDs with the consultants for all our major products and all our important materials.

So it wasn't an initial cost, but it's hard to isolate the ROI exactly because we believe, and we have had examples that clients choose us since we have EPD data. So it's hard to say, but it's not for free. And you need to have your internal resources.

But I mean, we have learned so much and since we are ahead of our competitors in this way, I think definitely it's been worth it economically.

Greg: Yeah. I guess there's also this thing of, when you want to stay a leader of your markets, you have to invest in initiatives. It's difficult to quantify the exact ROI, but you know, it's part of this thing that position you as a leader. Maybe it's your outstanding design as well, but you have to do it if you want to keep your market share. And I understand it's difficult to quantify.

I had another question regarding the business impact, which was about savings. Do you know if the work that you started with materials and with suppliers generated additional costs or do you know if they were, if they produced savings for Lintex?

Sara: We've done this alongside other initiatives as well. Now, because we look at different aspects of a material, the fiberboards we buy are made from recycled material—we made that change last year. As a result, their climate impact is now half of what it was.

But that change also allowed us to use the fiberboards more efficiently. So it was really two improvements in one switch.

We're also trying to use less material overall. For example, we're minimizing the use of aluminum without compromising function or design—using shorter brackets, for instance. That’s a clear win-win.

One more example: we use steel tubes for the stands on our mobile whiteboards. We reduced the thickness of the steel tube from three millimeters to 2.5 millimeters. That change alone cut CO₂ emissions by 16%. And it doesn't affect the product negatively—it actually makes it lighter. So again, a win-win.

So that's what we're doing now. We are rethinking everything: "do we have to do it this way?" That's also based on the lifecycle analysis.

Greg: It's so great because you start with a sustainability goal, and you end up putting your hands very deep into the product, and you can make other adjustments, which will have an impact on the users as well. If it's lighter, I guess you can move it around the room more easily in. It's great. So many benefits.

Sara: So I think it's really about challenging the ways you've always thought about things. And that's the thing that you do because when you start to work with sustainability, you think, okay, now we're going to do things differently.

And then other things just happen, other good things.

Greg: That's so great. And if we go back to EPDs and LCA in general, I was curious to get your opinion about the future of EPDs and LCA. You mentioned, for example, that you startedgenerating LCAs at scale. Are there any other things that you think would become more common?

Sara: I think that the EPDs are definitely here to stay.

Companies, organizations, they need to calculate their own climate footprint. They need to know the footprint of the products they purchase. And if we look at the EU, there are lots of legislation coming. The green claims, for example, where you have to have third-party verification before you claim something, before you say something about your climate impact.

So the EPD is third party verified, so there you have that. And we also have a big legislation coming up that's called Eco-Design for Sustainable Products (ESPR) and the digital product passport is included in there.

And if we don't know exactly what will be required yet, but there will probably be a requirement for climate impact of the product within the digital product passport, then everybody needs to have the LCA and the EPD third party verified. It's going to happen in three to five years.

Greg: Very clear. So, if you don't invest in EPDs or LCA, for sustainability, you can also do it for compliance reasons. You would get this benefit as well. So it's important to stress as well.

Sara: But if you just do it for compliance reasons, then you won't have the competitive advantage. Then you'll be like everybody else.

Greg: What's interesting about Lintex and about you is that you are now in a position where, for me, you are very advanced. You've done a lot of things. You've done a lot of LCAs, a few EPDs as well. I'm curious: if you were to speak with someone who's just starting their LCA journey, what kind of tips would you share to make their life easier?

Sara: First, I would be very blunt and say like, "just do it". You have to do it. But you can start with one or two products, and then you should choose the product with your most important materials, the materials that you use the most, and the most varied type of materials and components. And then just start digging.

Digging into the supply chain and talking to your suppliers, and you will probably need help from a consultant, but what you learn from the first one or two, LCAs and EPDs, it's going to give you so much. I mean, if you're just sitting at your office or at home at your company and thinking about what you should do and just guessing as we talked about in the beginning. This will help you so much with the strategic work. You will save so much time, and time is money. So it will save you a lot and like you will have the foundation for whatever you want to do within the sustainability field after you've done it.

Greg: I totally agree, like the benefits are insane when you think about it. It helps you with the roadmap, it helps you with reporting, it helps you with client communication. Like you said, I think it's a no-brainer.

Thanks so much, Sara. Where can we follow you? Is there, a social media platform where you are most active or, where you share updates more frequently?

Sara: I'm not very active on LinkedIn, but I am there. But we also publish updates on our sustainability webpage also. We have a sustainability section that we updated and expanded last year.

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Greg: Sounds great. And as a reminder, people can also find your EPDs on Environdec and on EPD Norway.

Sara: And you can always contact me, of course, if you want to ask something.