BAFU:2025 provides 11,747 life cycle inventories (cycles) across 176 product and process categories, covering construction, mobility, energy, metals, chemicals, paper, agriculture, food, consumption, and waste management.
The database is developed by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN / BAFU).
Geographical representation
The database is predominantly focused on Europe and European sub-regions:
Europe and sub-regions: 9,255 cycles
Switzerland: 4,649 cycles
Global (unspecified region): 608 cycles
Region-specific coverage beyond Europe includes:
North America (and sub-regions/countries): 237
China: 150
India: 80
Brazil: 63
…and many additional regions
Technological representation by genre
BAFU:2025 covers a wide range of technological contexts:
Material products: 4,056
Energy: 4,408
Infrastructure: 478
Waste management: 1,045
Transport: 1,296
Processing: 291
Usage: 173
Implementation in Earthster
Earthster benchmark results closely align with BAFU benchmarks for IPCC-based GHG impacts.
However, divergences occur for:
Biogenic methane
CO₂ from land use
These differences stem from missing characterization factors in the official BAFU benchmark results.
For non-GHG impact categories, results may vary across LCA software tools. At present, Earthster cannot formally assess consistency against BAFU benchmarks, as official benchmark results are not available for most commonly used methods.
Earthster has contacted the BAFU team to request additional impact benchmarks, particularly for EF 3.1, to support harmonization of results across software platforms.
Example of a BAFU life cycle inventory visualized in Earthster
Licensing
Free to use, not re-sellable, citation required: Database of the Swiss Federal Administration, BAFU:2025, Federal Office for the Environment, 2025
Collaboration and contact
The Swiss Federal Administration welcomes collaboration for updates and creation of new LCIs.
Contact: [email protected]
More info: https://www.bafu.admin.ch/de/oekobilanzen