History

From lifecycle assessment to true-cost measurement.

True Cost Index sits between lifecycle assessment and true-cost accounting. It borrows the discipline of physical lifecycle measurement, but refuses the final step of dollar conversion.

Lifecycle assessment

Lifecycle assessment developed as a way to quantify the environmental inputs and outputs associated with a product system. The method asks what is included, what is excluded, what functional unit is measured, and which physical flows are counted.

Modern LCA practice was shaped by ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 standardization, the rise of lifecycle databases such as ecoinvent and GREET, and the later spread of consumer-facing footprint calculators. True Cost Index draws from that measurement tradition but presents values for general readers as part of the Clay Indices family.

True-cost accounting

True-cost accounting often takes those measured physical effects and converts them into monetary values. That can be useful for policy analysis, but it adds another layer of judgment.

The path taken here

True Cost Index stops at physical measurement. It preserves the measured quantities as quantities: kg CO₂e, liters of water, m²-year of land occupation, kWh or MJ of energy, and grams of pollutants.

The site’s premise is intentionally narrow: if the quantity can be measured in physical units using established methods, it may be included. If the quantity requires editorial judgment to quantify, it is excluded.