In Part 1, we explored how Planetary Boundaries and PEF's 16 impact categories connect - with six PEF categories mapping to transgressed global thresholds. Now we'll show you how to use this lens to interpret your LCA results and identify where to focus your efforts.
Planetary Boundaries is a concept that assesses humanity's changes to the environment and highlights when a boundary is transgressed, risking the safe operating space for society to function. Today, seven of the nine boundaries are transgressed. As planetary boundaries gain public attention, it's worth looking at your LCA reports through this lens. This provides an additional basis for evaluating priorities - where to take action first, both to reduce environmental impact and mitigate supply chain risk factors.
Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) and environmental impact quantifications must balance covering all important issues while not overwhelming decision-makers with too many data points. An LCA under the PEF Framework evaluates impacts across 16 different categories. Changes in processes or raw materials can often improve one category but worsen another.
To avoid decision paralysis and provide a single score with standardised prioritisation, PEF applies normalisation (making different categories unitless and comparable) and weighting (giving, for example, Climate Change a comparatively high weight due to its importance). This weighting has been developed by the EU’s JRC according to the impact categories’ “relevance for the overall environmental problems” and included many stakeholders and advisors in the development process.
Yet PEF weighting can be complemented by planetary boundaries thinking, which offers a different lens: global systemic thresholds that signal where regulatory and stakeholder pressure is likely to intensify. Local contexts also matter - some environmental challenges are much more acute on regional scales and rise in priority accordingly. The annually released planetary boundary updates can draw attention to issues deserving renewed focus under changed circumstances.
Which PEF impact categories connect to planetary boundaries? Below is the mapping with an indication of which boundaries are transgressed in 2025:
Five of these six boundaries are currently transgressed, meaning humanity is exceeding the safe operating space for these Earth systems. It's important to note that non-exceeded and non-corresponding impact categories should not be ignored. This exercise primarily offers an additional angle for viewing the impacts from a PEF evaluation and encourages seeing them from a complementary perspective.
A comprehensive strategy addresses both boundary-connected impacts and other categories. However, the boundary lens helps identify which impacts face systemic, global-scale pressure.
Let's walk through an example. Below is a section of a Sustained report showing a product's impacts by category. The first step is identifying the categories connected to one of the transgressed boundaries (marked below with red arrows).
When reducing a product's environmental impact, you generally need to tackle the hotspots first to focus on areas with the largest leverage. Based on these results, Climate Change stands out as the most concerning category, followed by Acidification, Particulate Matter, and Terrestrial Eutrophication.
With planetary boundaries in mind, Land Use, Marine Eutrophication, and Water Scarcity should be added to the investigation list when examining the product's life cycle for intervention points. In this example, as with many food products, the main leverage point is the choice of ingredients and their production method (as indicated by the dominating blue bars in the image above).
Beyond environmental impacts that should be reduced, the results can identify supply chain risks by asking these questions:
Geographic assessment: Is the reason for this hotspot a geographical one?
For example, considering water scarcity, assess whether the water impact for the respective ingredient is high because the sourcing region has particularly high water stress.
Regulatory landscape: How high is the exposure risk to regulatory changes?
For example, considering particulate matter, assess the likelihood of supply restrictions from potential regulations limiting current practices (such as crop burning) in the region where the ingredient is sourced.
Physical risk: How much does the respective impact affect the supply-chain itself?
For example, considering terrestrial eutrophication, evaluate to what extent over-fertilisation might risk the sustainable, long-term supply of the ingredient itself.
Stakeholder pressure: Are stakeholders raising concerns?
Similar to the regulatory landscape above, consider what concerns other stakeholders might raise. For example, whether the public or local community opposes an ingredient or its cultivation due to its associated environmental impact.
Based on the exercise results, assess what ingredients (or supply chain elements generally) you should focus on in addition to the most environmentally impactful elements highlighted by the PEF report.
Supplier conversations:
Risk mitigation strategies:
Monitoring and reporting:
Planetary boundaries offer a complementary lens to standard PEF assessment. By mapping your LCA results to planetary boundary-connected impacts and assessing geographic and regulatory contexts, you gain additional insight into where to focus efforts, both to reduce environmental impact and manage exposure to risk.
Planetary boundaries are regularly updated, reflecting changes in human activities and their induced environmental effects. Regular reassessment ensures your strategy stays aligned with both environmental limits and business risk.