Glimpact’s EU-backed tool ranks brands like Patagonia, H&M, and Ralph Lauren across 16 environmental indicators (water use, land use, particulate matter emissions, eco-toxicity), not just carbon
NEW YORK — May 9, 2025 — Glimpact, the first platform for analyzing the overall systemic environmental impact of products and organizations, today launched Global Impact Score, North America’s first publicly accessible online tool to measure and analyze the explanatory factors of environmental footprint for all fashion products.
Global Impact score is free to use for anyone and performs calculations according to the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) methodological framework which is an LCA approach that looks at the entire product life cycle across 16 environmental indicators and generates an aggregated single score to be understood as a sort of environmental price. The systemic vision of this approach considers important environmental impact categories including water use, land use, particulate matter emissions, eco-toxicity and more, acknowledging that the environmental crisis is about more than only carbon emissions. This method is adopted as the scientific framework of the EU and more specifically ESPR which is poised to revolutionize product design practices by placing environmental performance at the heart of development and innovation models in the fashion industry.
With this tool comes a new understanding of the drivers of environmental footprint for all fashion products which underscores the value of using rigorous measurement to determine impact reduction initiatives. Beyond product-level analysis, this tool reveals broader insights into the real and unsuspected challenges of the ecological transition for the fashion industry revealed in a recent study by Glimpact on the challenges of the ecological transition of the fashion industry, which analyzed in preview and with this new tool specific apparel products from Patagonia, Reformation, H&M, Alo Yoga, and Ralph Lauren.
“The environmental crisis is not just about climate, it’s systemic and must take into account all components of the ecological crisis” said Christophe Girardier, Founder and CEO of Glimpact. “Our new Global Impact Score tool makes the systemic methodological framework adopted by the European Union accessible to all fashion stakeholders. This empowers brands to prepare for and comply with the requirements of the ESPR, which will make it mandatory to declare the environmental performance of each product and comply with eco-design requirements.
It is time for the fashion industry to embrace a new era – placing eco-design at the heart of development models and not at a purely marketing and opportunistic level.”
Key Features of the Global Impact Score Platform:
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Global Environmental Footprint Calculations: Built on the PEF method and on the product category rules developed by the European Commission with the participation of representative stakeholders of the global fashion industry, the “PEFCR Apparel and Footwear”, which has just been validated on April 25, 2025 by the EC as a reference framework for the application of the ESPR, the tool measures environmental impact across 16 environmental indicators including land use, ozone depletion, and water use, providing a 360-degree footprint view of a product from cradle-to-grave.
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Analysis of Explanatory Factors: Assessment results are broken down by life cycle stage and environmental impact category, offering insights into the key drivers of environmental footprint while understanding how this impact is distributed across different environmental indicators
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Eco-design Simulations: Users can test changes to material sourcing, production methods, and other variables to see their real-time effect of eco-design initiatives on overall impact.
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Open Access for All: Available online at no cost to businesses and consumers alike, marking a major step toward democratizing Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) insights.
The release of Global Impact Score comes as fashion brands face rising scrutiny over their sustainability claims and prepare for stricter regulatory requirements both in Europe and globally. Global Impact Score offers the full strength of the calculation engine of Glimpact’s broader SaaS platform for free to the public as an effort to invest in the ecological transition of the fashion industry by making PEF life cycle assessments accessible. By providing easy access to high-fidelity environmental data, Glimpact’s tool helps shift the focus from superficial ESG gestures, such as recyclable packaging, to the high-impact upstream processes that can truly offer impact reduction leverage.