The Ecochain Helix application allows you to analyze your LCA results in various ways. Under 'Results' you'll find a drop-down menu containing a product overview and statistics.

In case you want to make your products visible to all Ecochain Helix users, you can de-select the 'eye icon' on the left of your product name. To do so, go to the 'Results > Product overview' page (see above).

Once your product has been published, the item will be visible and usable for all Ecochain Helix users. They can 'purchase' your product in their accounts, by attaching the environmental impact of your product to the purchasing page of their account.

When you search for the audited product, e.g. 'Beton mengsel 1', you will see your published product appear in the search screen. In case the auditor attached a verification document, in the 'Verified' column of the search bar it will state 'Yes'. The verification document is now visibly attached to your product, and downloadable for other users.

When you wish to use this publishing link only internally, between two of your company accounts, it is important to unpublish the product again from the database. This is done by going back to the product overview and closing the 'eye icon'. The link between your accounts will stay, but the product is no longer visible in the database for other Ecochain Helix users.

The statistics page can show your results in a graphic, visual way, which can be helpful when explaining results to colleagues or clients. Throughout all the results pages, the impact category can be changed, so its shows you directly the results of other impact results.

The environmental impacts that occur along the supply chain vary inherently. Hence, these impacts are categorized into impact categories (e.g. climate change, ecotoxicity). To obtain a single indicator, weighting and normalization of the distinct impact categories is necessary. This is done in the form of the Environmental Cost Indicator (ECI), or the Milieu Kosten Indicator (MKI) in Dutch.

The impact categories are ordered based on characterization factors. Characterization factors are numbers that indicate how much a specific substance (e.g. 1 kg of CO2) contributes to an environmental effect (e.g. climate change). Since more greenhouse gases contribute to climate change, the mutual relationship between these substances has to be determined. After characterization, an environmental analysis provides a score on various environmental themes such as climate change, acidification, eutrophication, etc. To convert the individual scores on different impact categories to one number, a conversion and weighting need to be applied, since each impact category is measured in its own, unique unit. Weighting reflects the relative importance of the environmental themes and is based on a shadow price method - the costs (damage caused) to the environment that aren't accounted for in regular pricing. The shadow price is the highest cost level acceptable for governments (prevention costs) per unit of emission control.

Here all the inserted products in your account will be shown in a bar chart. The three colors used in this graph are blue for transport, green for materials and orange for proces impact. The graphs can show you the single product results or the total production result. This last one is especially handy when you want to include the whole production, and not only per product. For example when a product with a high impact is only produced a few times, the total production impact can show you which products to focus on for improvement. Maybe this is a product that has a lower impact per single product, but is produced in larger volume which results in a higher total production impact. The bars can also be sorted by name or by value.

The product results can also be shown in a 'donut graph' as shown below. You can get this graph by clicking on one of the bars in the previous image, that shows your product results. The graph will be displayed below the product results.