Combining SHDB with Ecoinvent: A new tool for LCSA

1. Context Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) combines techniques and data (E-LCA, S-LCA and LCC) to evaluate environmental, social and economic negative impacts and benefits throughout life cycle. Until now... [ view full abstract ]

1. Context
Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) combines techniques and data (E-LCA, S-LCA and LCC) to evaluate environmental, social and economic negative impacts and benefits throughout life cycle. Until now practitioners had to conduct each assessment separately. The ecoinvent database is a world-leading database of consistent, transparent, and up-to-date Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data. The Social Hotspots Database, produced by New Earth, is the first comprehensive database for Social LCA.

2. Objectives
The purpose of a new project involving the Ecoinvent center and New Earth was to see if, and how, the social risk tables contained within the Social Hotspot Database (SHDB) could be re-purposed for use directly within the ecoinvent database, so that life cycle assessment practitioners could assess both social and environmental impacts using a single integrated database.

3. Methodology/approach
The social risk data in the SHDB are assigned to (and reflect the attributes of) country-specific sectors; these data tend to provide global coverage, addressing over 200 countries and regions. By contrast, unit processes in the ecoinvent database are at the level of engineering processes or activities at a higher level of aggregation, and in many cases, there are chains or “sub-trees” of consecutive processes which all occur within a given sector. In this project, we made use of international trade data, together with the new (to ecoinvent 3) convention of modeling markets and using “rest of world” processes in the Ecoinvent database, in order to provide the bridge necessary for applying the risk tables within the ecoinvent database. Commodity price data were also needed and used in order to complete the integration.

4. Findings and contributions.
Ecoinvent unit processes now include risk level data on over 130 indicators. This can make it possible to assess jointly the environmental and social impacts of product life cycles. We demonstrate applications of the new database, compare results with those obtained from using the SHDB and ecoinvent databases separately, summarize some of the strengths and weaknesses of the new data capability, and discuss how the field of social LCA can proceed to continually enrich the detail and coverage of country-specific risks within integrated environmental and social LCA databases.