Social aspects for sustainability assessment of technologies—challenges for social life cycle assessment (SLCA)

Lehmann, Annekatrin; Zschieschang, Eva; Traverso, Marzia; Finkbeiner, Matthias; Schebek, Liselotte

doi:10.1007/s11367-013-0594-0

Cited by 134 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Correspondingly, most methods put emphasis on the coverage of social issues on workers, while the stakeholders of consumer and value chain actors are rarely considered (Table 1). Although some authors covered social issues with additional indicators, they focused either on the stakeholder of workers or product, project, and technology-specific indicators [53]. The partial LCA may reflect the statement that "companies need to assess only those parts that they have an influence on" [17,38].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Life Cycle Assessment Revisited

Dan²,

Chen

2014

Sustainability

140

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Abstract:To promote the development of Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA), we conducted a comprehensive review of recently developed frameworks, methods, and characterization models for impact assessment for future method developers and SLCA practitioners. Two previous reviews served as our foundations for this review. We updated the review by including a comprehensive list of recently-developed SLCA frameworks, methods and characterization models. While a brief discussion from goal, data, and indicator perspectives is provided in Sections 2 to 4 for different frameworks/methods, the focus of this review is Section 5 where discussion on characterization models for impact assessment of different methods is provided. The characterization models are categorized into two types following the UNEP/SETAC guidelines: type I models without impact pathways and type II models with impact pathways. Different from methods incorporating type I/II characterization models, another LCA modeling approach, Life Cycle Attribute Assessment (LCAA), is also discussed in this review. We concluded that methods incorporating either type I or type II models have limitations. For type I models, the challenge lies in the systematic identification of relevant stakeholders and materiality issues; while for type II models, identification of impact pathways that most closely and accurately represent the real-world causal relationships is the key. LCAA may avoid these problems, but the ultimate questions differ from those asked by the methods using type I and II models. OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2014, 6 4201

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Life Cycle Assessment Revisited

Dan²,

Chen

2014

Sustainability

140

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Although the methodological sheets provided indicator sets related to relevant stakeholder groups, no widely agreed approach for selecting indicators, relevant social issues, and involved stakeholders exists Martínez-Blanco et al 2014;Andreas Jørgensen et al 2009). In addition, since social impacts are usually associated with organisations' behaviour (Dreyer et al 2006;Andreas Jørgensen et al 2009), allocating social impact to a specific product is not straightforward and thus often hinders the implementation and meaningfulness of SLCA (Andreas Jørgensen 2013; Lehmann et al 2013). Another big challenge lies in linking social indicators to impact categories and AoPs via social impact pathways Neugebauer et al 2014).…”

Section: Research Needs and Outlookmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment Approaches for Manufacturing

Chang

Neugebauer

Lehmann

et al. 2017

Sustainable Production, Life Cycle Engineering and Management

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Sustainability assessments considering the three dimensions environment, economy, and society are needed to evaluate manufacturing processes and products with regard to their sustainability performance. This chapter focuses on Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA), which considers all three sustainability dimensions by combining the three methods Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Costing (LCC), and Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA). Existing LCSA approaches as well as selected ongoing work are introduced, both regarding the individual approaches as well as the combined LCSA approach. This includes, for instance, the Tiered Approach. This approach facilitates the implementation of LCSA, for instance, within the manufacturing sector, by providing a category hierarchy and guiding practitioners through the various impact and cost categories proposed for the three methods. Furthermore, ongoing developments in LCC and SLCA are presented, such as the definition of first economic and social impact pathways (linking fair wage and level of education to social damage levels) for addressing the current challenges of missing impact pathways for economic and social aspects. In addition, the Sustainability Safeguard Star suggests a new scheme for addressing the inter-linkages between the three sustainability dimensions. These approaches foster the application and implementation of LCSA and thus contribute to developing sustainable processes and products.

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“…Aparcana and Salhofer (2013) employ SLCA to assess the social impact of three Peruvian recycling systems based on two formalization approaches. Lehmann et al (2013) use SLCA for a comparative technology analysis and investigate two case It is difficult to quantify the social performance and the defined social indicators/criteria in some studies (Manik et al 2013) because some of the indicators, such as fair salary and social benefits, are qualitative. This study thereby develops a fuzzy set theory method to quantify the social indicators/criteria and uses the proposed SLCA method to determine the social criteria for sustainability assessment.…”

Section: Social Life Cycle Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prioritization of bioethanol production pathways in China based on life cycle sustainability assessment and multicriteria decision-making

Ren

Manzardo

Mazzi

et al. 2015

Int J Life Cycle Assess

175

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Purpose The study objectives are twofold: (i) combining the life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) framework and the multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) methodology for sustainability assessment and (ii) determining the most sustainable scenario for bioethanol production in China according to the preferences of the decision-makers/stakeholders. Methods Life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle costing (LCC), and social life cycle assessment (SLCA) are combined to collect the corresponding criteria data on environmental, economic, and social aspects, respectively. The study develops a novel SLCA method for quantifying the social criteria. The decision-makers/stakeholders can use linguistic terms to assess these criteria, and fuzzy theory is used to transform the linguistic variables into real numbers. Once the sustainability assessment criteria are determined, the study develops an MCDM method that combines the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the VIKOR method to prioritize the alternatives. The AHP is used to determine the criteria weights that are a prerequisite when using VIKOR; the VIKOR method is then used to determine the sustainability sequence of the scenarios. Results and discussion The study's proposed method investigates an illustrative case about three alternative bioethanol production scenarios (wheat-based, corn-based, and cassavabased): The prior sequence (based on the sustainability performances) in descending order is cassava-based, cornbased, and wheat-based. The proposed methodology results allow Chinese decision-makers/stakeholders to select the most sustainable scenario among many alternatives. The proposed methodology is generic, meaning that further alternatives can be studied and the most sustainable option can be ultimately determined.Conclusions The main study contribution is to test the combination of an MCDM methodology and LCSA for sustainability decision-making by studying three alternative pathways for bioethanol production in China. The proposed method feasibly enables the decision-makers/stakeholders to find the most sustainable scenario to achieve their objectives among various alternatives.

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Social aspects for sustainability assessment of technologies—challenges for social life cycle assessment (SLCA)

Cited by 134 publications

References 22 publications

Social Life Cycle Assessment Revisited

Social Life Cycle Assessment Revisited

Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment Approaches for Manufacturing

Prioritization of bioethanol production pathways in China based on life cycle sustainability assessment and multicriteria decision-making

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