Purpose and context This paper aims to establish principles for the increased application and use of life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA). Sustainable development (SD) encompassing resilient economies and social stability of the global system is growingly important for decision-makers from business and governments. The “17 SDGs” emerge as a high-level shared blueprint for peace, abundance, and prosperity for people and the planet, and “sustainability” for supporting improvements of products and organizations. A “sustainability” interpretation—successful in aligning stakeholders’ understanding—subdivides the impacts according to a triple bottom line or three pillars: economic, social, and environmental impacts. These context and urgent needs inspired the LCSA framework. This entails a sustainability assessment of products and organizations in accordance with the three pillars, while adopting a life cycle perspective. Methods The Life Cycle Initiative promotes since 2011 a pragmatic LCSA framework based on the three techniques: LCSA = environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) + life cycle costing (LCC) + social life cycle assessment (S-LCA). This is the focus of the paper, while acknowledging previous developments. Identified and reviewed literature shows challenges of addressing the three pillars in the LCSA framework implementation like considering only two pillars; not being fully aligned with ISO 14040; lacking interconnectedness among the three pillars; not having clear criteria for results’ weighting nor clear results’ interpretation; and not following cause-effect chains and mechanisms leading to an endpoint. Agreement building among LCSA experts and reviewing processes strengthened the consensus on this paper. Broad support and outreach are ensured by publishing this as position paper. Results For harmonizing practical LCSA applications, easing interpretation, and increasing usefulness, consensed ten LCSA principles (10P) are established: understanding the areas of protection, alignment with ISO 14040, completeness, stakeholders’ and product utility considerations, materiality of system boundaries, transparency, consistency, explicit trade-offs’ communication, and caution when compensating impacts. Examples were provided based on a fictional plastic water bottle Conclusions In spite of increasing needs for and interest in SD and sustainability supporting tools, LCSA is at an early application stage of application. The 10P aim to promote more and better LCSA applications by ensuring alignment with ISO 14040, completeness and clear interpretation of integrated results, among others. For consolidating its use, however, more consensus-building is needed (e.g., on value-laden ethical aspects of LCSA, interdependencies and interconnectedness among the three dimensions, and harmonization and integration of the three techniques) and technical and policy recommendations for application.

This paper reviews actual sustainability assessments in the construction sector to define whether and how a Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) is applied and interpreted in this sector today. This industry has large shares in global energy (33%), raw material consumption (40%) and solid waste generation (40%). Simultaneously, it drives the economy and provides jobs. The LCSA is a method to identify environmental, social and economic impacts of products/services along their life cycles. The results of this study showed a mismatch between sectoral emissions and the number of LCSA-based impact evaluations. It was found that only 11% of papers reviewed assessed all three sustainability pillars. The economic and especially the social pillars were partly neglected. In Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs), 100% made use of Global Warming Potential (GWP) but only 30% assessed more than five indicators in total. In Life Cycle Costing (LCC), there were a variety of costs assessed. Depreciation and lifetime were mainly neglected. We found that 42% made use of Net Present Value (NPV), while over 50% assessed individual indicators. For the Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA), the focus was on the production stage; even the system boundaries were defined as cradle-to-use and -grave. Future approaches are relevant but there is no need to innovate: a proposal for a LCSA approach is made.

No abstract

No abstract

The current dependency on steel within modern society causes major environmental pollution, a result of the product’s life cycle phases. Unfortunately, very little data regarding single steel production processes have been found in literature. Therefore, a detailed analysis of impacts categorized in terms of relevance cannot be conducted. In this study, a complete life cycle assessment of steel production in an integrated German steel plant of thyssenkrupp Steel Europe AG, including an assessment of emissions from the blast furnace, the basic oxygen furnace, and casting rolling, is carried out. The functional unit is set to 1 kg hot-rolled coil, and the system boundaries are defined as cradle-to-gate. This study models the individual process steps and the resulting emitters using the software GaBi. Total emissions could be distributed into direct, upstream, and by-product emissions, where the biggest impacts in terms of direct emissions from single processes are from the power plant (48% global warming potential (GWP)), the blast furnace (22% GWP), and the sinter plant (79% photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP)). The summarized upstream processes have the largest share in the impact categories acidification potential (AP; 69%) and abiotic depletion potential fossil (ADPf; 110%). The results, including data verification, furthermore show the future significance of the supply chain in the necessary reduction that could be achieved.

No abstract

This article deals with the application of social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) in the construction sector and explicitly focuses on carbon reinforced concrete (CRC). The publication consists of two parts: (1) a scientific literature review on the current implementation of S-LCA in the construction sector, and (2) the definition of the relevant social hotspots for the cradle-to-gate production of CRC. The literature review was conducted to provide a general overview and compare S-LCA studies in the construction sector; second, countries that provide the relevant input materials needed for CRC were identified. Analysis within the Social Hotspot Database (SHDB) helped determine the relative importance of the CRC supply country for each social category and subcategory. By developing a metric in the form of scores for each risk information, the potential risks indicated by the SHDB were measured. The results show that the focus of the indicators to be highlighted and further used in the indicator catalog is particularly in the area of labor rights and decent work in the health and safety subcategory. Missing data within the SHDB may result in a defined high average score and lead to a lower level of information. In the future, the identified 36 social indicators for CRC should be revised again in cooperation with the manufacturing industry. This study aims to further raise awareness in the construction sector of life-cycle-based sustainability that goes beyond the environmental aspects, and it is the first social hotspot screening using the SHDB for CRC.

The aim of this study is to define, via an online expert survey, current challenges and possible future approaches in and for the implementation, application, and interpretation of the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA). Using an online survey, sustainability experts from around the world were surveyed over a period of five weeks, resulting in 71 experts answering 25 questions. The experts were invited by e-mail and through networks; the online questionnaire was the preferred survey choice particularly for reasons of time, cost, and the pandemic. The survey evaluation shows that no change in LCSA is needed. Nevertheless, (1) a detailed optional baseline LCSA framework, with pre-selected fixed indicator sets, (2) a supporting optional but unified visualization tool, (3) a clear and transparent communication on assumptions, targets and system boundaries and (4) early defined stakeholders were identified as relevant for further LCSA implementation and interpretation. Due to natural subjectivity, the results of this written survey are to be understood as recommendations for action and orientation, not explicitly as a prediction. Finally, an action outlook for future LCSA-development is given.