Case studies/Action
Non-food discount retail
Netherlands
Carbon · CTI · DPP
ISO 14067 · verified by SGS
ISO 14067 · verified by SGS
30 products, 738 components, one pipeline. Audit-ready in weeks.
- Action, one of Europe's largest non-food discounters, needed product-level carbon and circularity data it could stand behind
- Input: raw supplier bill-of-materials PDFs for 30 products across 14 categories, from apple cakes to soundbars
- Output: cradle-to-gate LCAs, Circular Transition Indicator (CTI) scores and digital product passports, in weeks
30products assessed, incl. multi-factory variants
14product categories: food, textiles, electronics, DIY, pet care
738BOM components analysed across product and packaging
255 → 199raw material names harmonized to a clean taxonomy
40+emission-factor sources, incl. Ecoinvent v3.9 and Agri-footprint 5.0
4.3 / 5average data-quality index, scored per SKU
The challenge
Every category, every supplier format, one deadline
- Disclosure wave. CSRD reporting, the ESPR digital product passport, customer demand for credible data
- Data existed, unusable. Supplier BOMs as PDFs in every layout and language, from apple cakes to a solar security camera
- Consultancy model breaks. Months and five-figure fees per product, stale on the next supplier change
- Thousands of SKUs, fast rotation. Hand-built LCAs cannot keep up
What we did
From BOM PDF to product passport
- Action shared BOM files for 30 products, product and packaging, plus weights and production locations
- GreenSwapp's AI pipeline did the rest
1Extract and structure
- Every supplier BOM PDF, any layout, any language
- Component-level data: part, material, quantity, weight
2Harmonize materials
- 255 raw material names mapped to 199 standard materials
- A documented reason for every mapping
3Fill the gaps
- Missing weights derived from literature and teardown studies
- Each value flagged with provenance and a quality score
4Calculate carbon
- Cradle-to-gate footprints per component and per SKU
- IPCC AR5 characterization, region-matched factors from 40+ sources
5Score circularity
- Inflow circularity: certified, recycled or virgin
- Outflow circularity: recovery rates, rolled up per product
6Deliver and verify
- Every SKU cross-checked against its source BOM
- Delivered as LCAs and digital product passports
- Improvement recommendations per product
The results
A full picture Action never had before
- Footprint and circularity side by side, for the first time
- Carbon spread of two orders of magnitude across the range
- Circularity from near zero to 85%, showing where certified sourcing and material switches pay off
- One product came out net carbon-negative: the FSC 100% teak Decowood stool stores more carbon than its production emits. A shelf-edge claim, backed by a defensible calculation
Circularity spread across the assortment
Circular Transition Indicator (total) per product, final results. Assortment average 32.4% across 28 scored SKUs.
−1.34 kgA carbon-negative product, found in the data
- FSC 100% teak Decowood stool, cradle-to-gate
- Biogenic storage outweighs production emissions
0 → 85%Certified sourcing moves the score
- Best scores came from certified or recycled inputs
- Shows exactly how much certification lifts circularity
Per factoryGranularity down to the mill
- Multi-factory products assessed per site
- The granularity digital product passports demand
ISO 14067 methodology, verified by SGSEvery footprint on this page was computed with GreenSwapp's carbon footprint methodology, independently verified by SGS in accordance with ISO 14064-3 as meeting ISO 14067 and aligned to ISO 14040/14044. The numbers are defensible in front of a buyer, a regulator or a customer.
Time and cost
Weeks of pipeline vs. years of consultancy
- Consultancy rate: €10k to €30k and 2 to 6 months per product LCA1
- 30 products the old way: a €300k to €900k programme, over a year, before circularity or passports
- GreenSwapp: carbon, circularity, LCAs and passports delivered together in weeks, at a small fraction of that cost2
- Action's effort: share the BOMs it already had, answer targeted questions
The traditional route
- €10k to €30k and 2 to 6 months per product LCA
- Separate engagements for circularity and DPPs
- Consultants request data in their template; your team reformats every BOM
- Static PDF reports, stale on the next supplier change
- Effort scales linearly: 10× the SKUs, 10× the cost
With GreenSwapp
- All 30 products, delivered together in weeks
- Carbon + CTI + LCA + digital product passport in one pass
- Any BOM format accepted as-is, PDFs straight from suppliers
- Living data: re-runs when a BOM changes
- Marginal cost per SKU falls as the pipeline learns
The hassle Action skipped
What Action's team never had to do
✕
No data wranglingSupplier BOMs went in exactly as they were: mixed formats, abbreviations, missing weights and all.
✕
No methodology decisionsScope, characterization factors, recovery-rate benchmarks and material mappings were handled and documented, every choice traceable to a source.
✕
No LCA hiringNo specialist recruitment, no consultancy procurement cycle, no tool licensing.
✕
No quality-control burdenEvery SKU was cross-checked against its source BOM. Each data point carries a provenance label and a quality score.
✕
No dead-end deliverableResults arrived with per-product improvement recommendations: which certifications, which material switches. Not just numbers.
Why this scales
Built for 30 SKUs. Ready for 30,000.
- Pilot spanned Action's whole universe: food, textiles, furniture, electronics, chemicals, pet care
- Everything learned is codified: harmonization rules, per-category weight benchmarks, certification-to-circularity tables
- Economics compound: the first SKU in a category builds the reference data, every following SKU reuses it
- The ten-thousandth SKU is a batch job, where a consultancy's thirtieth costs the same as its first
More case studies
Send us the bill of materials you already have.
Methodology. Carbon: product carbon footprints per ISO 14067 (methodology verified by SGS in accordance with ISO 14064-3), cradle-to-gate, IPCC AR5 characterization, region-matched emission factors from 40+ published sources including Ecoinvent v3.9, Climatiq, Agri-footprint 5.0, PlasticsEurope and the World Steel Association. Circularity: WBCSD Circular Transition Indicators framework, inflow scored on certified and recycled material attributions, outflow on material-class recovery rates. Every data point carries a source attribution and a data-quality score (pilot average 4.3/5).
1 Typical published ranges for consultant-led single-product LCAs; varies by product complexity and region. 2 Exact engagement duration and pricing available on request. Figures shown are from the Action pilot dataset (final delivery).