PanzerGlass Showcases LCA Results: Here's How They Did It

The Danish company PanzerGlass, one of the world's leading producers of protective glass for mobile phones and tablets, has taken a leading role in transparency on its sustainability journey. They now present the first results from an extensive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) conducted in partnership with Bureau Veritas. However, the journey towards these results has been just as important as the figures themselves.

At the Innovation For All (IFA) exhibition in Berlin 2024, PanzerGlass' COO, Casper Aaen, took the stage in front of a full auditorium to share the first LCA results. It required over a year of data collection across the entire supply chain to map the total environmental impact of the products.

Now, he has laid all the cards on the table in front of the entire industry.

"We chose to be fully transparent in our sustainable journey, even though it poses a risk. There are still various ways to measure environmental impact, so we risked our results appearing worse than others in the industry," Casper Aaen explained about the experience in Berlin:

"But with Bureau Veritas as an internationally recognized partner at our back and a well-known systematic method behind the LCA results, we knew our data were robust and reliable."
 

Data Collection from the Entire Supply Chain

One year earlier, Casper Aaen stood on a different stage, creating his first experiences with this complex data collection process. He traveled to Asia to meet with PanzerGlass suppliers and to present the company’s sustainability plan.

There, he discovered that transparency was a new and unfamiliar concept in the supply chain, and he was surprised at how difficult it was to obtain primary data.

"We wanted to find solutions to reduce our environmental impact throughout the product lifecycle—from raw material extraction to production and transportation, and later from customer use to disposal," he said. However, for many suppliers, this was a completely new agenda.

"Although we work with some of the strongest in the market, they were not on board with this journey. At PanzerGlass, we strive to be easy to collaborate with. That's why we make all our data available through the PIM (Product Information Management) system. But the suppliers had simply never been asked these kinds of questions before."

And this marked the beginning of a whole new collaboration with suppliers.

A Need for Common Standards

The LCA results, which Casper Aaen could proudly present on stage in Berlin the following year, required PanzerGlass to take responsibility for enhancing understanding of sustainable business across the entire supply chain. This effort was much more resource-intensive than initially assumed and also opened up issues of a cultural, economic, and political nature.

For Casper Aaen, it is clear: "There is a need for common standards if we are to succeed in measuring sustainability and making it possible for customers to understand and compare across brands."

A Life Cycle Assessment provides a credible starting point, as it is based on international standards in the ISO 14040 series. Thus, it becomes a real tool to document environmental impact across industries, manufacturers, and markets.

Here you can see the four main steps in an LCA

A piece of advice: Start now!

The LCA results have already influenced PanzerGlass’ internal processes and go-to-market strategies. COO Casper Aaen also hopes that the company's transparency with these results will inspire others to get started:

"If you haven't started, now is the time. It is a long-term investment to get a handle on your sustainability data, but it is also a competitive advantage to be able to provide this data," he says.

The demand for documented sustainability will increase, both from legislation and from partners like PanzerGlass, which must gather data throughout the entire value chain. In this way, all companies are 'affected', but Casper Aaen points out that PanzerGlass started its journey out of a sense of responsibility.

"As a global company reaching millions of people worldwide, we are obliged to take responsibility. Running a business is unequivocally about making money in the short term, but if you also want to be there in the long term, you need to have a broader perspective," he says, emphasizing that it's not about idealism:

"The need for sustainability is clear, no matter where you go," he concludes. He himself has recently traveled to the southern Moroccan Sahara Desert to participate in the Marathon des Sables and has gained significant first-hand experience regarding the effects of climate change, which is now also a personal driving force: "We're talking about the world's driest desert - and it rained throughout the race, so we had to change the route. It was shocking."

Bureau Veritas conducts life cycle assessments for both Danish and international companies, and they are based on international standards in the ISO 14040 series. We can also help assess whether an LCA is right for you.