EIA Startup Environmental
Impact Assessment

Prove your environmental impact honestly

A structured, defensible account of your startup's environmental impact that you can put in front of an investor without overstating anything.

About 45–60 minutesNo consultant neededEnds in a Word report

Why this exists

If your startup makes any kind of environmental claim, you have probably run into the same wall. An investor, an accelerator, or a corporate customer asks: "Can you show us your impact numbers?" And your options look like this:

Commission a full LCA or GHG Protocol audit.Rigorous and credible, but typically far too slow and expensive at your stage, especially when the product still changes every few months.
Put together some numbers yourself.Fast, but you end up reporting whatever data you happen to have rather than what actually matters. That is how well-meaning founders accidentally end up greenwashing.
Say nothing specific.Safe, but it makes a genuinely good venture look like it has nothing to show.

This tool is built for that gap. It is a screening-level assessment: it will not replace a full LCA, and it does not pretend to. What it gives you is a structured account of what you claim, why you believe it, and how confident you actually are.

The framework behind it comes from academic research on environmental impact assessment in early-stage ventures. The tool makes it something you can sit down and fill out.

What you get at the end

A Word report you can send to an investor, an accelerator, or your board, containing your impact classification, your impact pathway, a short and focused set of indicators, every claim labelled with how confident you are, and an automated integrity check that flags the weak spots before someone else does.

Plus a save file, so you can return and update the assessment as your company grows rather than starting from scratch. Your progress is also kept automatically in this browser as you work.

Before you start

You do not need an environmental consultant, and you do not need perfect data. Bring about an hour, whatever operational data you already have, and honesty about what you do not know. That last one matters most: a report that admits uncertainty is far more credible than one that does not.

The five steps

1

Profile & classify your startup

Enter your startup's details, then answer two plain-language questions about how your environmental benefit actually arises.

These two answers determine how your startup should be assessed at all. A company that captures carbon directly should be measured very differently from software that helps customers waste less fuel. Most tools apply the same checklist to everyone; this one branches.

2

Map your impact pathway

The tool loads the right template for your type and walks you through each stage: what happens, the assumption linking it to the next stage, and how strong your evidence is.

This is the heart of it. Impact claims fall apart at the joints, not in the middle. An agtech company can have flawless sensor data and still be wrong, because the real question is whether farmers change what they do. Any link you rate as weak gets flagged automatically.

3

Select your indicators

Browse a bank of indicators across six categories, then score each on relevance and feasibility.

The instinct is to measure everything you can measure, and that instinct is backwards. An office recycling rate is easy to report and tells nobody anything about whether your product helps the planet. Low relevance gets excluded no matter how easy it is to measure. That rule is deliberate.

4

Label your uncertainty

Write each claim as you would say it out loud, then label how confident you are and note the assumptions behind it.

All three confidence levels are legitimate for an early-stage company. What destroys credibility is mixing them up. Labelling them separately makes your strong claims stronger: when a reader sees you were scrupulous about the soft numbers, they trust the hard ones.

5

Review, report & export

Set the milestone when you will revisit this, read the automated integrity checks, and download your report.

The integrity checks are the tool reviewing your work before anyone else does: vanity metrics, a core set grown too big, claims that are all projections, estimates with no documented assumptions.

How confidence is labelled

Every claim you make gets one of three labels. All three are perfectly legitimate for an early-stage company:

Measured: you have your own operational data behind this
Modelled: it comes from industry averages, supplier data, or a simplified calculation
Projected: it rests on assumptions about future adoption or scale

Nobody expects a seed-stage startup to have audited figures for everything. What destroys credibility is presenting a projection as if it were a measurement.

What makes this different

It adapts to your companyFour startup types, three pathway structures, guidance that shifts with your development stage. Not a generic form.
It is proportionateThree to five well-chosen indicators, not a corporate checklist. At ideation, getting the logic right matters more than having numbers.
It protects you from greenwashingNot a warning in the footer, but scoring rules that exclude vanity metrics and checks that catch known failure patterns.
It treats uncertainty as a featureBeing precise about how confident you are is more honest, and in front of a sophisticated investor, more persuasive.

What this is not

Not a full LCA. It does not replace ISO 14040/14044 assessment.
Not comprehensive GHG accounting. The built-in estimator is a screening tool using generic emission factors. Swap in national, year-specific factors before reporting externally.
Not a certification. Nobody audits your inputs. Its credibility comes from transparency about method and confidence.
Not a score. There is no single number at the end, deliberately.

Questions

How long does this take?

About 45 to 60 minutes for a first pass. You can stop at any point: your progress is kept in this browser, and you can download a save file to continue on another device.

Where is my data stored?

Only in your own browser. Nothing you type is sent to a server; the report files are generated on your device. Clearing your browser data removes the saved progress, so download the JSON save file if you want a permanent copy.

Do I need perfect data to start?

No. Bring whatever you already have: utility bills, a bill of materials, cloud dashboards, customer numbers. Honesty about what you do not know matters more than the data, and the tool is built to make gaps visible rather than paper over them.

Do I need an environmental consultant?

No. The questions are in plain language and the tool explains each concept as you go. There is a key-terms panel on the first step, and nothing here assumes a sustainability background.

Is this a replacement for a full LCA?

No, and it does not pretend to be. This is a screening-level assessment that gives you a structured, defensible account of your impact. It does not replace ISO 14040/14044 assessment or comprehensive GHG accounting.

Can I come back and update it later?

Yes, and that is the intended use. Download the JSON save file at the end, then load it when your next review milestone arrives. The tool picks up where you left off and bumps you to the next review cycle automatically.

Is there a single score at the end?

Deliberately not. Reducing environmental impact to one figure is precisely what makes impact claims misleading. You get a classification, a pathway, a focused indicator set, and an honest confidence label on every claim.

Can I get it wrong on the first pass?

There is genuinely no way to. Every answer can be changed later, and nothing is locked in. The only real mistake is being less honest than you could have been, and the tool is built to make that harder.

Ready?

Put in your startup's name and answer the first question. You can change everything afterwards, and there is no way to get it wrong on the first pass.

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