Properties allow you to track and report essential data that falls outside traditional life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) categories. While an impact category tells you the environmental burden (CO2 footprint), a process property tells you about the physical or economic nature of the process itself, for example its dry mass, biogenic carbon content, energy content, or market value.
Properties are needed for reporting input and output indicators of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs).
Available properties
Property | Unit | Details |
Carbon content, biogenic | kg | Weight of carbon (C) stored in the product from biogenic sources (e.g. wood, paper, plant products) |
Carbon content, fossil | kg | Weight of carbon (C) stored in the product or cycle from fossil sources (e.g. plastics, oil, coal) |
Energy in materials, non-renewable | MJ | Stored energy categorized as Non-Renewable (e.g., plastics) |
Energy in materials, renewable | MJ | Stored energy categorized as Renewable (e.g., wood) |
Exported electricity | MJ | Energy exported as electricity. Used for EPD reporting. |
Exported heat | MJ | Energy exported as heat. Used for EPD reporting. |
Fuels, secondary, non-renewable | MJ | Non-renewable secondary fuels (for example used fossil based oils and lubricants) used as an energy source (burning) in the product system. |
Fuels, secondary, renewable | MJ | Renewable secondary fuels (for example used cooking oils) used as an energy source (burning) in the product system. |
Lower heating value | MJ | The combustible energy stored in the product (excluding energy lost to water vapor). Also called as net calorific value. |
Mass, dry | kg | Total weight of the product. Excludes water content. |
Mass, wet | kg | Total weight of the product. |
Materials, for energy recovery | kg | Tracks materials destined for energy recovery. For example incineration with energy recovery. |
Materials, for recycling | kg | Tracks materials destined for recycling during the life cycle of the product. |
Materials, for reuse | kg | Tracks materials destined for reuse in another product. For example pallets. |
Materials, secondary | kg | The total weight of all the recycled materials (in kg) used as a raw material in the product. For example post-consumer scrap metal. |
Price | EUR2025 | The market value of the product, adjusted for modern inflation. |
Working with process properties
Properties are accessible via the Properties tab within any process (inputs, custom processes, stages...). You can view and set the property values in any of your processes and even on the cycle level.
To define a property manually, simply select the Value field for the desired property and add a value.
When you add input processes, Earthster automatically retrieves and calculates property values from the underlying background data:
Overriding properties
Background databases provide a standard starting point, but they may not always reflect the specific reality of your supply chain. Earthster gives you the flexibility to override these default values at any stage.
Once a value is overridden, the new data propagates through the cycle.
To remove a property override click on the x. This will restore the original value provided in the dataset.
Properties overview
A table with the full view of all properties across all processes can be viewed at the Properties’ overview tab:
TIP: To edit a property, click its value for quick access to the process property drawer.
Properties in background databases
Currently properties are supported for the Ecoinvent database. For the remaining databases, the user sets the values themselves.
Ecoinvent properties
Ecoinvent datasets contain extensive metadata and property information available to users with a full Ecoinvent license. The following table outlines the logic applied to map these Ecoinvent properties to Earthster’s default properties.
Earthster Property | Unit | Formula (using ecoinvent properties) |
Carbon content, biogenic | kg | Carbon content, biogenic = carbon content, non-fossil * dry mass |
Carbon content, fossil | kg | Carbon content, fossil * dry mass |
Energy in materials, renewable | MJ | Lower heating value [MJ] * (carbon content, fossil [kg] / total carbon content [kg]) |
Energy in materials, non-renewable | MJ | Lower heating value [MJ] * (carbon content, fossil [kg] / total carbon content [kg] |
Lower heating value | MJ | Lower heating value = heating value, net |
Price | EUR2025 | Price = EUR2005 * 100/65.73 (using Eurozone-20 HICP) |