Social Life Cycle Assessment a pathway framework

Attempts to establish an accepted method to evaluate social aspects have been a concern amongst academics and industry. However, there is still a lack of consensus on what is the best approach to adopt regarding social... [ view full abstract ]

Attempts to establish an accepted method to evaluate social aspects have been a concern amongst academics and industry. However, there is still a lack of consensus on what is the best approach to adopt regarding social assessment. The aim of this work is to identify the mid-point social impact categories for assessing products and services on a Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) pathway approach. This work has been based on an extensive literature review covering scientific articles, which are focused on social responsibility and social sustainability. This literature review has provided a database composed of 1450 social indicators. A content analysis has been performed in order to aggregate the indicators into different areas of protection, leading to standardized mid-point categories. A set of sixteen social mid-point categories has been proposed. The selection of these categories was validated through the application of a set of face-to-face semi-structured in-depth interviews. The interviews were conducted at companies from different industries in the European Union, positioned at various levels of the supply-chain. The corporate managers in charge of sustainability were the persons interviewed. To summarize, this work reinforces the foundations of S-LCA and proposes the definition of a new taxonomy for the social mid-points, which improves upon.