PIQET is so well adapted to the packaging industry that it takes designers, marketing professionals, environmental managers and other colleagues only 30 minutes to use. You don’t have to be an LCA expert, you just need to understand your product. If you need to evaluate environmental performance to compare product designs or for internal or external reporting purposes, PIQET will save you lots of time and money!

Firstly, the existing reports are set up to be as flexible as possible. With the report builder, you can select the indicators and outputs that are most relevant to you, that are exported as pdf, word or excel documents, so that you can easily fit them into your existing templates if needed.

If this isn’t enough for your needs, we can customise your experience by tailoring packaging databases, product information forms, supplier specifications and transport route selection software, all to suit your product specifically. This service extends to the reports generated by PIQET so they can meet your internal and other reporting requirements. The customisation of PIQET can also ensure processes sit well within a company intranet and alongside other in-house software tools.

PIQET has been made to be easy. Our clients are generally surprised at how quickly they are up and running and how little time it takes to undertake an assessment. The hours of support included in your PIQET license can be used for training or to give you a hand on your assessments- and this is generally enough.

If you do need to go further, the PIQET team can provide additional professional service as a project or a pilots, including:

PIQET assessments

• Facilitating packaging review workshops

• Corporate reporting

• Full LCA studies on products and packaging systems

To get started, you can commission a PIQET Assessment prior to taking out a full license so that you can better determine what sort of internal resources would be needed if you subsequently adopted the use of the system in-house. A PIQET assessment is completed external to your business by one of our experts and would involve the following stages:

• We will provide you with a data template (you may need to refer us to suppliers or internal resources that hold the necessary data).

• You will identify the design variations that you would like to compare.

• A draft PIQET report will be generated for you to review and you will be set up with a temporary PIQET license. At this stage, we will discuss what key performance measures you wish to assess such as climate impacts, water consumption etc, and we will walk you through the results within the tool.

• The final PIQET report will be submitted to you with recommendations for selecting the most sustainable packaging design option.

If you decide to purchase the license after this, we will provide you with a purchase discount.

While our existing selection boasts over 100 packaging materials, we understand that composite materials or unique blends might come into play.

Creating a custom material in PIQET is a straightforward process that offers you the flexibility to tailor your packaging analysis. Here's how you can achieve it:

- Navigate to the ‘Custom’ tab then click ‘Custom Materials’

- A tabulated view of the custom materials you will have created will be saved here for quick reference

- Click the ‘ADD CUSTOM MATERIAL’ button to get started on creating your first custom blend

- A pop-up window will emerge, prompting you to name and describe your blend.

- Align your blend's end-of-life behavior with an existing material's end-of-life treatment. For instance, if you're working with a paper-polyethylene blend, which is technically recyclable but has low recycling rates, it's advisable to select LDPE, rather than paper, for end-of-life treatment. We suggest consulting reliable government data sources for recycling rates in your region. This will help you make an informed decision about which material to mimic for your custom blend.

- Fill in details for each material—name, weight, and scrap weight.

- As each element is added, the table below catalogs your components.

- The finishing touch: hit "SAVE," and your composite material finds its place in the summary table.

During projects, ticking the custom material box reveals your catalog of crafted composites. Choose the one that best fits your analysis. Design, save, and elevate your packaging analysis with your tailored blend. PIQET's customization empowers your analytical precision.

While PIQET is capable of calculating results for over 35 impact categories, it's advisable to focus on the key ones that align with your company's objectives, project scope, or packaging concerns.

After project completion, a comprehensive report can be generated, breaking down LCA results across your chosen impact categories.

To tailor your report, navigate to the 'Select Impact Categories' field and opt for 'Customize categories.'

A section will appear below, allowing you to choose the specific impact categories you intend to include.

For detailed insights into these impact categories, refer to the Indicator Manual.

PIQET draws data from SimaPro LCA software's extensive libraries, which draws primarily from the extensive Ecoinvent international LCA database, and is aligned with ISO 14044 and Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) standards.

While PIQET respects ISO 14044 for individual LCA studies, this isn't directly applied to databases or tools. We follow PEF methods, integrating the allocation factor approach. PIQET's default 50/50 sharing aligns with PEF, offering flexibility with user-controlled PEF values.

In 2011, PIQET met the carbon footprint standard PAS2050:2008, and we're exploring recertification with the GHG protocol by the World Business Council through the Carbon Trust. LCA processes vary in data quality; energy, global warming data is reliable, but packaging, logistics, and filling show variability. Uncertainty varies among indicators, with energy being more certain than toxicity metrics.

PIQET serves as a quick early design tool, providing directional insights without primary data. Consider results as directional, especially in small differences between product systems. For more information on specific data sources, see our Data Manual.