Incapto LCA

Office coffee consumption represents one of the most mundane yet consequential daily practices in contemporary workplaces — billions of cups annually, each with embedded environmental costs spanning water use, land degradation, packaging waste, and energy consumption. Incapto, a company rethinking coffee machine design for sustainability, engaged Inviable to conduct comprehensive life cycle assessment research to inform their ecodesign strategy.

Our work began with an extensive literature review mapping the environmental footprint of coffee production across major growing regions, considering not just agricultural impacts but supply chain complexity, processing methods, and end-of-life scenarios. We then conducted a detailed life cycle assessment of coffee consumption patterns in typical office environments, identifying hotspots where design interventions could meaningfully reduce environmental burden. The analysis integrated both technical assessments and behavioral insights — recognizing that sustainable coffee machine design isn’t purely a product engineering question, but also about shaping workplace practices around resource consumption.

The Incapto LCA project exemplifies how life cycle thinking, properly applied, can become a blueprint for genuine product sustainability rather than incremental greenwashing — grounding ecodesign decisions in scientific rigor and comprehensive impact understanding.