“LCA has finally become an everyday tool”, Éric Lesage, EcoDesignCloud

Kristel Milet Adriaenssens (Photo credit: Oxana Semenova)

5 January 2026

“LCA has finally become an everyday tool”, Éric Lesage, EcoDesignCloud

Launched in 2023, the platform EcoDesignCloud is aimed to help companies assess the environmental impact of their products throughout their life cycles. It is designed to make eco-design more widespread by making environmental analyses accessible, fast, and compatible with regulatory requirements. Widely used in merchandising, it helps players, both major cosmetics groups and suppliers, to reduce costs and analysis time, speed up decision-making, and integrate the environmental impact into the core of their product strategies. We met Éric Lesage, CEO and co-founder.

Premium Beauty News – Can you tell us the story of EcoDesignCloud?

Éric Lesage - EcoDesignCloud arose from the need to set up a scientific method no longer based on extrapolation and spending, but on the activity, in order to generate data with calculations that stand up to criticisms.

The idea initially came from the confrontation between environmental analysis IT and consulting agencies specialising in product Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The former relied on extrapolations based on self-reported company spending, while the latter based their calculations on highly complex international methodologies that were, above all, impossible to implement on a large scale. When you need three to six months to analyse the environmental impact of only one product, how can you meet the needs of a client who counts 600,000 in their range? We thought we should reconcile the two worlds.

And instead of extrapolations, we analyse the actual activity, product by product. This approach puts both brands and suppliers on an equal footing and helps them compare their solutions based on a common, rigorous methodology.

Premium Beauty News - What is the impact on the ecosystem?

Éric Lesage - It changes everything! For the first time, we were able to gather brands and their suppliers in a shared database. This move towards transparency helps legitimate price differences associated with eco-design. Some of our clients have already used it, for example Valentino, who announced they saved 420 tonnes of CO₂ with a new pack thanks to EcoDesignCloud. Similarly, Salinas Packaging directly displays the environmental impact of its B2B samples to justify price differences from one material to the other. Sustainability has become a measurable economic argument.

Premium Beauty News - Does this solution also satisfy regulatory constraints?

Éric Lesage - Absolutely. Companies are now required to comply with CSRD and ESG obligations across Europe, the UK, the US, and beyond. We provide all the necessary data, including Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, as well as the 16 environmental indicators required under European regulations. Then, our clients can use this data in their communications, especially regulatory reporting. It also helps them anticipate and justify the carbon taxes they will have to pay.

Premium Beauty News - How is the platform actually used?

Éric Lesage - We generate data that flows throughout the entire value chain, from designers and buyers to logisticians and marketing teams… For example, a designer can assess the environmental impact of a display unit or a retail fixture right from the material selection stage. They receive an ecoscore in real time, and then their supplier provides the actual production data. This enables immediate and shared awareness, from the very beginning, of materials and their impacts. Today, we count 600 clients in 35 countries and a growing network of manufacturers, including 300 Chinese suppliers, in particular to support players like L’Oréal in China.

Premium Beauty News - Why start with merchandising and retail marketing?

Éric Lesage - Because they were the poor relation of environmental analysis. These products are largely outsourced, they change every couple of weeks, and nobody really had any visibility on their impact. Some of our clients found out merchandising accounted for 30% of their total emissions! In France, this business weighs about 100,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year on its own.

Premium Beauty News - Can you tell us about your development priorities?

Éric Lesage - We have become a reference in merchandising, retail marketing, gifting and professional textiles. Now we are going back up to primary packaging (bottles, tubes...), because manufacturers drive us to and want to align their analyses throughout the product chain. We have also been working on compliance with the future Chinese regulations, because China aims to set an example regarding eco-design and traceability, in particular in retail.

Premium Beauty News - How can you access the tool?

Éric Lesage - EcoDesignCloud is a SaaS solution accessible through subscription. Brands can find the suppliers already using the platform, and vice versa. It is designed to create a seamless ecosystem, where all players finally speak the same language, that of scientific impact data.