What are the major developments in regard to SLCA?
1) The Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2011
2) 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets (specified by indicators) in 2015
What is the aim of the Social LCA guidelines?
To integrate social aspects into sustainability assessment to cover all three pillars of sustainability in the assessment:
–> Why?
- Company’s responsibility (e.g. do not want to be linked to ‘child labor’ or ‘corruption’, neither within their organization, nor in their supply chain)
- Consumer wants to know which social impacts the product carries
- Public authorities need to apply the integrated product policy, for example for their public procurement, etc.
What are social impacts?
- consequences of positive and negative pressures on social endpoints (i.e. well-being of stakeholders).
- Classification of the social impact can be twofold:
- acc. to impact categories
- acc. to stakeholder categories, which represent all social groups affected during the production and consumption process
What is S-LCA? And what are the SLCA phases?
- Methodology to assess the social impacts of products & services across their life cycle
- provides infos on social & socio economic aspects
- helps decision making
- improve social performance & well being of stakeholders
- provides a roadmap to assist stakeholders by assessing social impacts of products life cyle’
- same phases as LCA: goal & scope, slci, slci assessment, interpretation
–> many methods exist for social assessment but SLCa guidelines are currently the only ones which specifically address products and the life cycle
Name three core concepts of SLCA.
Actual social impact:
positive or negative consequences coming from the relationship between an activity and an aspect relating to human well beeing –> has to be observerd directly by stakeholder
Potential social impact:
likely presence of a social impact, resulting from the activities/behaviors of organizations linked to the life cycle of the product or service and from use of the product itsel
Social risk:
probability of negative social effects on stakeholders through an organization’s activities and business relationships
–> several extensions of risks: low to high, measured on country, sector, company level,..
Social hotspot:
location/activiity in the life cycle where a social issue is likely to occur
How do SLCA and LCa differ from other environmental and social assessments?
almost the entire life cycle is assessed –> wide system scope (vs for example CSR (most assessment is done on enterprise level and limited part of the supply chain)
data is collected on all three levels:
- process within establishment
- facility/plant/ site within establishment
- enterprise/management
What are the key differences between (E)LCA and SLCA?
Explain ELCA
ELCA:
-follows the standard ISO 140040/44
- only focuses on negative potential environmental impacts
- source of information is always about physical quantities related to the product
- focuses on quantitative data (site-specific can be less relevant)
- data is related to the fU/ results are expressed in fU
- impact assessment is based on categories at midpoint or endpoint level
- established impact assessment models exist
What are the key differences between (E)LCA and SLCA?
Explain SLCA
- no standards, only guidelines
- focus is on positive & negative potentical social/socio-economic aspects
- source of information is the same as ELCA but additional information of organization related aspects along the LC
- qualitative, semiquantitative data
- site specific data is highly desirable
- fU as in LCA but a lot more challenging
- impact assessment on subcategroies, stakeholder groups, impact categories
- BUT no established impact assessment models exist
explain the positive impacts that are asssessed in the SLCA guidelines.
First time that they are mentioned in the guidelines.
Are benefits from product life cycle that make a positive contribution
Assessed by looking g at positive effects experienced by affected stakeholders
What are the three types of positive impacts?
–Type A: Positive social performance going beyond business as usual
–Type B: Positive social impact through presence at a location
–Type C: Positive social impact through product utility (e.g., vaccinations)
What is a relevant formula for the sustainability assessment of products?
LCSA = LCA (environmental life cycle assessment) + LCC (life cycle costing) + SLCA (social life cycle assessment)
What are the main challenges of SLCA?
Challenge 1: Relating indicators and impacts to the functional unit!
Challenge 2: Data collection
Challenge 3: Missing practicable impact assessment models –> Lack of application of characterization models & impact pathways, and development of new ones
What are the main revisions of the SLCA Guidelines?
- Updates regarding new methods and data
- more mature and detailed guidance
–Integration of new stakeholder group (Children) and related subcategories (education provided in the local community, health issues for children as consumers, …)
- Relevant SDGs for each of the subcategories will be noted in the updated methodological sheets
- …
What are the SLCA guidelines/phases?
the same as LCA
- definition of goal & scope (goal & scope, functional unit, reference flow, system boundaries)
- social life cycle inventory (LCI) –> data is collected: LCI results obtained either from a database/generic data or site specific data
- impact assessment (reference scale approach vs impact pathway approach)
- interpretation/communication (completeness check; consistency check; uncertainty, sensitivity, data quality check; materiality assessment; conclusions, limitations, recommendations); labels for products
–> iterative process (create, test, and revise until satisfied with the end result)
What is decided in Goal & Scope?
Purpose, object, and methodological framework are determined in this phase
Stakeholder should be included in G&S
Goal:
- Which product or organization?
- Why is the study being conducted?
- Who is the target audience ?
Scope:
- What is the object of the study?
- What methodological framework should be used?
- -> RS or Impact pathway: Which stakeholders? What impact categories?
What are the stakeholder groups and the relevant subcategories in the SLCA guidelines?
–>worker: child labour, fair salary,…
–> local community: respect of indigenous rights, access to resources, ..
–> value chain actors: fair competition, supplier relationship,…
–> society: technology development, corruption,…
–> consumers: health & safety, transparency,…
–> new: children: education, health issues
Explaint the first challenge of SLCA?
Challenge 1: Relating indicators and impacts to the functional unit.
SLCA indicators (e.g., number of children working) CANNOT be easily referred to a functional unit (e.g., 1 t-shirt) and cannot easily be aggregated over the life cycle
Reason:
- qualitative and semi-quantitative Data and indicators
- Social aspects result from company behavior than from a product
–> works well with LCA indicators (e.g. CO2 emissions) can be easily referred to a functional unit (e.g. Ykg CO2 per t-shirt) and aggregated over the life cycle
Reason:
- environmental aspects can directly be related to processes/products
What is an exemplary goal of SLCA?
Hotspot identification:
to identify in which areas of the product supply chains we should dig deeper
Example: Social Hotspot database
→ Provides information on sector and/or country level regarding the risk or opportunity that a social aspect occurs
Explain how different data collection methods differ in regard to reliability and expenditure, time, costs, …?
The more evidence-based data is, the higher the reliability the higher the expenditure, time, costs, …is. (standardized surveys, focus groups,..)
photos, videos, case studies provide emotionally convincing data –> less reliability, less expenditure, time costs, …
Explain activity variables.
- measure of process activity which can be related to process output
- e.g., attributes concerning labour conditions –> activity variable is worker-hours.
What is an approach for collecting activity variables data?
–Through site-specific data collection
–Use of S-LCA dedicated databases such as SHDB or PSILCA
What is the second challenge in SLCA? LCA vs SLCA
Challenge 2: Data collection
LCA:
- databases for generic inputs/outputs are available
- useful, impacts are usually a result of the processes
SLCA:
- databases are lacking, show risks only
- impacts are more a result of the company’s behavior
- site specific data is needed
What are the UNEP/SETAC/LCI Methodological sheets?
- Used for SLCI
- Available for each of the 6 stakeholdergroups
- Provide more guidance on how to conduct a SLCA, i.e.how to assess the 31 subcategories
How is the fU defined for SLCA?
– properties
– relevant market segment
– relevant product alternatives
– obligatory product properties required by the relevant market segment
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Introduction to Sustainable Management Tools36
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LCA29
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Carbon Footprint12
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Product Environmental Footprint8
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PCR & EPD10
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Water Footprint14
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Resource efficiency & criticality27
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SLCA32
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LCC28
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LCSA15
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LCST6
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LCSD6
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Sustainability analysis in companies20
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Stakeholder Analysis11
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Resource Efficieny & Criticality10
