Methodologies for Social Life Cycle Assessment*

Goal, Scope and Background. In recent years several different approaches towards Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) have been developed. The purpose of this review is to compare these approaches in order to highlight methodological differences and general shortcomings. SLCA has several similarities with other social assessment tools, although, in order to limit the expanse of the review, only claims to address social impacts from an LCA-like framework are considered. Main Features. The review is to a large extent based on conference proceedings and reports, which are not all easily accessible, since very little has been published on SLCA in the open literature. The review follows the methodological steps of the environmental LCA (ELCA) known from the ISO 14044 standard. Results. The review reveals a broad variety in how the approaches address the steps of the ELCA methodology, particularly in the choice and formulation of indicators. The indicators address a wide variety of issues; some approaches focus on impacts created in the very close proximity of the processes included in the product system, whereas others focus on the more remote societal consequences. Only very little focus has been given to the use stage in the product life cycle. Another very important difference among the proposals is their position towards the use of generic data. Several of the proposals argue that social impacts are connected to the conduct of the company leading to the conclusion that each individual company in the product chain has to be assessed, whereas others claim that generic data can give a sufficiently accurate picture of the associated social impacts. Discussion. The SLCA approaches show that the perception of social impacts is very variable. An assessment focusing on social impacts created in the close proximity of the processes included in the product system will not necessarily point in the same direction as an assessment that focuses on the more societal consequences. This points toward the need to agree on the most relevant impacts to include in the SLCA in order to include the bulk of the situation. Regarding the use of generic data as a basis for the assessment, this obviously has an advantage over using site specific data in relation to practicality, although many authors behind the SLCA ESS-Submission Editor: Dr. David Hunkeler ([email protected]) Societal LCA Methodologies for Social LCA Int J LCA 13 (2) 2008 97 ing developed to include a multitude of impacts, ranging from direct impacts on workers to broader societal consequences. Decision-makers from several different areas have found interest in SLCA, such as decision-makers on investment (Methot 2005), design (Schmidt et al. 2004, Gauthier 2005), industrial management (Cañeque 2002, Schmidt et al. 2004, Dreyer et al. 2006, Nazarkina and Le Bocq 2006), consumers (Spillemaeckers et al. 2004) and public decision making (Hunkeler 2006). Also, a number of methodologies have been created without a specified target group of users (Barthel et al. 2005, Flysjö 2006, Manhart and Grießhammer 2006, Norris 2006, Weidema 2006). Furthermore, SLCA-like Internet databases are under development, having the goal to make data broadly and easily accessible to a wide range of users (Earthster 2007). Because of the limited, available descriptions, this initiative will not be discussed any further. In this review we try to draw a picture of the present landscape of SLCA by analysing the existing methodology and proposals for SLCA based on the sources mentioned above. Especially the report made by Nazarkina and Le Bocq (2006), which was already a review and analysis of SLCA methodologies, has served as a basis for this article. The review is based on a thorough literature survey including journal papers and, in particular, less easily accessible sources like conference proceedings and reports, as very little has been published until now in peer-reviewed journals. The review attempts to highlight the general points of agreement and disagreement among the authors and tries to give a specific focus on the methodological shortcomings, thereby giving a picture of the degree of maturity in the already available proposals. The presentation and discussion of the methodologies follows the general methodological framework of the SLCA as proposed by the UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative Cross cutting taskforce 3 on integration of social aspects in LCA, similar to the framework for Environmental LCA (ELCA) laid out by ISO 14040, namely: Goal definition; scope definition; inventory analysis; and impact assessment (Grießhammer et al. 2006). The interpretation phase will not be discussed here. SLCA is developing in a scientific field with many parallels to methodology discussions in Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA), Social Impact Assessment (SIA), social accounting and others. It was chosen in the review only to include methodology proposals that claim to assess social impacts based on an LCA-like framework. A consequence of this approach is the omission of methodology proposals with no claimed connection to LCA methodology, even though they may have some relevance to the overall goals of SLCA. 1 Goal definition of an SLCA study In spite of their short history, SLCA-approaches have already been developed to support several different goals. As in ELCA, two main classes of goals can be identified. One is product, process or company comparison, herein also labelling and social responsible investments, as exemplified by Schmidt et al. (2004), Spillemaeckers et al. (2004), Méthot (2005). The other class is identification of product or process improvement potentials (Flysjö 2006, Gauthier 2005, Dreyer et al. 2006, Manhart and Grießhammer 2006). These classes of goals should be seen as complementary. Different goals have implications for the methodological possibilities and limitations, which will be discussed in the following. Still, several of the approaches do not specify one specific goal, such as Barthel et al.(2005), Norris (2006) and Weidema (2006). 2 Scope definition of an SLCA study The objective of the scope definition is to identify and to define the object of the study and to delimit the assessment. In this section, the origin of social impacts, allocation, system boundary setting and social indicators will be discussed. 2.1 The origin of social impacts Product systems or service systems are often composed of many processes. In ELCA it is generally accepted that the environmental impacts arise because of the nature of these processes. In other words, there is a causal link between process and environmental impact. The environmental assessment, thus, is based on an aggregated inventory of input and output for processes that are needed to provide the function defined in the functional unit. Regarding SLCA, on the other hand, it has been discussed whether this is a valid approach. Dreyer et al. (2006) and Spillemaeckers et al. (2004), for example, argue that most social impacts have no relation to the processes themselves, but rather to the conduct of the companies performing the processes. The causal link is therefore not from process to social impact, but from conduct of the company to the social impact. They argue therefore that the SLCA inventory analysis should be focused on the companies involved in the product system. Schmidt et al. (2004), on the other hand, maintain that the focus on the process is the basis for the assessment as used in the ELCA.