Free trials of paid databases?

Question

I'm currently reviewing our companies EPD strategy, previously we have collated the relevant data and sent it to an LCA expert to produce an LCA for us which was then used to get an EN 15804 EPD. The products in questions are construction products made out of plasticised PVC.

I've downloaded the OpenLCA software and a copy of some of the free databases. To have a play with OpenLCA and see whether using OpenLCA to create our own LCA's in the future, which could then be given to an EPD provider to produce a third-party verified EPD.

However, the free databases do not seem to have all the data I need. In order to give the OpenLCA software and the idea of creating our own LCA's a fair chance is there a free trial of one of the paid databases (EcoInvent, EuGeos or another)?

It could be an old version of the dataset not the most current I don't mind as I'm not looking to create anything commercially useful at this stage, just trying to do a feasibility study of using the free OpenLCA software and a quality database to create our own LCA's. Once, I prove that this is something I should be able to do. Then it should be fairly easy to justify paying for the database compared to the relative costs of someone doing it on our behalf.

Answer 1

Hi and welcome, good question, so far we do not provide trial versions of databases as we provide the full databases "unprotected". We can show you how to work with a database in a meeting if you are interested. You can also check the case studies we have published (at least then the reports), and some of the videos on that show using databases

- thank you, best wishes, Andreas

Comments

Thank you for your quick reply Andreas. I will review the case studies and videos in detail first and then I may be in touch to arrange a meeting.