Organisation

Created in 1997, the ecoinvent Centre (originally called the Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories) is a Competence Centre of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH Zurich) and Lausanne (EPF Lausanne), the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research (Empa), and the Swiss Federal Research Station Agroscope Reckenholz-Tänikon (ART).

With a cooperation contract between these involved institutions the duties and the rights between all involved actors are fixed. Based on this contract, the following bodies exist within the ecoinvent Centre:

• ecoinvent Board
• ecoinvent Management
• Group of LCI Experts
• Editorial Board
• International Advisory Council

 
The entire revenues of the ecoinvent Centre are reinvested in improving the quality of the product. In this sense the ecoinvent Centre is a non-profit entity, not paying out dividends to its owners.

On the technical level, the ecoinvent Centre is trusting since the year 2000 in the technical knowledge and the savoir-faire of the German company ifu Hamburg GmbH, under the lead of Jan Hedemann – company that developed and is operating the ecoinvent software.