Social Life Cycle Assessments: A Review on Past Development, Advances and Methodological Challenges

Abstract

Society’s interest in social impacts of products, services and organizational behaviors is rapidly growing. While life cycle assessments to evaluate environmental stressors have generally been well established in many industries, approaches to evaluate social impacts such as Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) lack methodological consistency and standardization. The aim of this paper is to identify past developments and methodological barriers of S-LCA and to summarize how the automotive industry contributed to the advancement or application of this method. Therefore, a qualitative content analysis of 111 studies published between 2015 and 2020 is used to gather information on past scientific and political milestones, methodological barriers impeding S-LCA and the participation of the automotive sector. The review shows that a broad range of sectors such as the automotive industry contributed to the testing and advancement of S-LCA in the past but that S-LCA remains a young and immature method. Large-scale application is impeded by major barriers such as the variety of impact categories and sub-categories, the lacking integration of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), issues of linking LCA structures to social phenomena or the difficult tracking of social impact pathways. Further research on standardization possibilities, the connection to political social targets and the testing of methods is necessary to overcome current barriers and increase the applicability and interpretability results.

Social Organizational Life Cycle Assessment (SO-LCA) and Organization 4.0: An easy-to-implement method

“…Companies are increasingly interested in extending the analysis of the environmental impacts of products, services and processes, carried out through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), to the social dimension. The Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) and Social Organizational Life Cycle Assessment (SO-LCA) methodologies respond to this need from the perspective of the product and the organization respectively [1] . While LCA is a well-established methodology, regulated by the ISO 14040 series of standards [2] , and used in a wide variety of applications, S-LCA/SO-LCA are still in a methodological consolidation phase that follows the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) Guidelines for the Social LCA of Products and Organizations [3] .…”

The pursuit of methodological harmonization within the holistic sustainability assessment of CCU projects: A history and critical review

“…The third and final assessment strand examined in isolation is SIA (also commonly referred to as S-LCA). As the youngest and least standardized of the "strands", social assessments represent an area of growing interest and relevance (Klöpffer, 2003;Jørgensen et al, 2007;Pollok et al, 2021).…”

“…Vanclay (2003), proposes that any developed guidelines should be derived from core values and principles (Vanclay, 2003) such as the UN SDGs (United Nations, 2015a). When considering comparability of assessments, Pollok et al (2021) notes that while the ISO format is generally accepted within social assessment, it is not implemented rigorously. This often results in major divergences and complicates the harmonization and subsequent integration of assessment strands.…”

Design for Recycling Strategies Based on the Life Cycle Assessment and End of Life Options of Plastics in a Circular Economy

“…As Pollok et al. summarize, S‐LCA is the youngest of the three methods and lacks standardization despite guiding documents like the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) guidelines for S‐LCA of products [ 112,113 ] and their methodological sheets or the Handbook for Product Social Impact Assessments (PSIA). [ 114,115 ] As a result, existing S‐LCA studies are highly individualized and contain various different methodological components.…”

“…As a result, no uniform and transparent approach exist and studies are rarely comparable. [ 112,116,117 ]…”