The evaluation and reduction of the environmental impact of manufacturing processes have become a crucial issue in the last
few years, addressing the interest of industrial and academic research towards greener solutions and technologies. Reducing input materials
and energy requirements has become an imperative action in the industrial practice. As a matter of fact, strong is the concern on lightweight
solutions and technologies for sheet stamping operations especially in the automotive sector. However, the knowledge on how
impactful such processes are is still poor. In this paper, a comparison between a traditional deep drawing and an single point incremental
forming process is investigated. Experimental tests and numerical simulations were carried out and two different approaches were compared
to evaluate the processes environmental impact. The analysis revealed that, despite having higher energy consumptions, incremental
forming processes result more eco-friendly than traditional stamping operations; in fact, the impact from the input material is the
most critical one. A cradle to gate approach in the evaluation of forming technologies pointed out efficient material use strategies as priority
in sheet forming processes