SummaryMeasuring the sustainability of goods and services in a systematic and objective manner has become an issue of paramount importance. Life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) is a holistic methodology whose aim is to integrate into a compatible format the analysis of the three pillars of sustainability, namely, economy, environment, and society. Social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) is a novel methodology still under development, used to cover the social aspects of sustainability within LCSA. The aim of this article is to provide additional discussion on the practical application of S-LCA by suggesting a new classification and characterization model that builds upon previous methodological developments. The structure of the social analysis has been adapted to maintain coherence with that of standard LCA. The application of this methodology is demonstrated using a case study-the analysis of power generation in a concentrated solar power plant in Spain. The inventory phase was completed by using the indicators proposed by the United Nations Environment Program/Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (UNEP/SETAC) Guidelines on S-LCA. The impact assessment phase was approached by developing a social performance indicator that builds on performance reference points, an activity variable, and a numeric scale with positive and negative values. The social performance indicator obtained (+0.42 over a range of -2 to +2) shows that the deployment of the solar power plant increases the social welfare of Spain, especially in the impact categories of socioeconomic sustainability and fairness of relationships, whose results were 1.38 and 0.29, respectively.
Keywords:industrial ecology life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) social hotspots social indicators social performance sustainability Supporting information is linked to this article on the JIE website
The standard ISO 14044:2006 defines the hierarchical steps to follow when solving multifunctionality issues in life cycle assessment (LCA). However, the practical implementation of such a hierarchy has been debated for twenty-five years leading to different implementation practices from LCA practitioners. The first part of this study discussed the main steps where the ISO hierarchy has been implemented differently and explored current multifunctionality practices in peer-reviewed studies. A text-mining process was applied to quantitatively assess such practices in the 532 multifunctional case studies found in the literature. In the second part of the study, citation network analysis (CNA) was used to identify the major publications that influenced the development of the multifunctionality-debate in LCA, i.e., the key-route main path. The identified publications were then reviewed to detect the origins of the different practices and their underlying theories. Based on these insights, this study provided some “food for thought” on current practices to move towards consistent methodology. We believe that such an advancement is urgently needed for better positioning LCA as a tool for sustainability decision-making. In particular, consistent allocation practices could be especially beneficial in bioeconomy sectors, where production processes are usually multifunctional, and where current allocation practices are not harmonized yet.
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