1. A method, the method carried out by program code stored on non-transient computer-readable medium and executed by a processor, the method comprising: deconstructing a first system tree in a computer-readable medium, the first system tree deconstructing into a first plurality of constituent nodes, each node in the first system tree representing a characteristic of a component of a system under consideration; searching a database of trees for a plurality of trees containing similar attributes to the first system tree, within an inputted band of variability, across key system characteristics; ranking each of the first nodes according to their respective environmental impact in relation to a plurality of relevant nodes such that a second plurality of environmentally unfriendly nodes are ranked highly; qualifying a second tree of the plurality of trees based on a frequency of nodes in the second tree that are similar to the second environmentally unfriendly nodes; selecting a third plurality of most relevant nodes from the second tree, wherein the searching the database is terminated when the third nodes reach a threshold, the threshold representing a fraction, less than a whole, of an environmental footprint of the first system tree; and replacing, in the first system tree, the second nodes with the third nodes.