Social-LCA in Life Cycle Management: Comparison
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Please note this is a comparison between Version 2 by Vivi Li and Version 3 by Somayeh Rezaei kalvani.

Social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) is an emerging and pivotal tool for sustainability evaluation of products throughout their life cycle (UNEP,2009). 

  • social life cycle assessment
  • Life Cycle Management
  • social sustainability

1. Life Cycle Management (LCM):

Life Cycle Management (LCM[1]) is identified as an integrated technique for sustainable management of products and services throughout their life cycle in different dimensions including social, economic, and environmental aspects[2].  For economic, the Life Cycle Costing (LCC), for the environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and for the social dimension, the Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA)technique is established.[1]LCC is a technique for evaluation of cost throughout its production process[3] with considering all of the costs [4]including construction, operations, conservation, substitution, and utilities[5]. LCA is defined as an approach for environmental impact assessment of products alongside their life cycle[1]. The category for assessment is human health, ecosystem and, resources.[6]

2. Social Life Cycle Assessment:

Social-LCA is one of the three elements of sustainability in LCM. The social-LCA is a technique for evaluation of social impacts of products and services in their life cycle  (UNEP, 2009). The Social-LCA was established by adding a social aspect to the LCA.  [7] Even though it can be evaluated separately without conducting LCA. The steps for conducting S-LCA are based on ISO14044 with four main steps: 1. Goal and scope definition 2. Inventory analysis 3. Life Cycle Impact Assessment. 4. Interpretation [8](UNEP, 2009). The involved stakeholder plays an important role in the S-LCA study and the selection of stakeholders (worker, local community, value chain actors, consumer, society) depends on the goal of the study [8](UNEP, 2009).

3. History of Social-LCA development:

In the 1970s, the Social Impact Assessment (SIA) approach was introduced with the aim of evaluating of social impacts of industrial products[9]. The framework for assessment of SIA is not based on LCA and the method does not evaluate social impacts alongside whole life cycles of products and is able only to evaluate the human wellbeing in one phase of products[10]. Dryer in 2006 provided a framework for social life cycle assessment. [11]The first guideline for S-LCA was published by United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) in 2009. After the publication of UNEP guideline, the number of Social-LCA studies has increased. [12]  In 2020 the new version of the guideline has been published (UNEP, 2020) and children was added as one of the stakeholders[13].   

4. Limitation of S-LCA technique:

Data availability is the major challenge of conducting a Social-LCA study because data collection is time-consuming. Another challenge of conducting S-LCA is finding appropriate indicators for the investigation of main social issues because conducting comprehensive social LCA is complex (because many data are needed).

References

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