Social Life Cycle Assessment

Social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) evaluates the social and socio-economic impacts of products and services across their entire life cycle, from raw-material extraction through manufacturing, use, and disposal. It mirrors the four-phase structure of environmental LCA, goal and scope definition, inventory, impact assessment, and interpretation, but replaces physical pressures with effects on people, organized by stakeholder categories such as workers, local communities, society, consumers, and value-chain actors. The approach was codified in the 2009 UNEP/SETAC Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment of Products, edited by Catherine Benoit and Bernard Mazijn, which established stakeholder categories, impact subcategories, and the use of performance reference points to judge whether a measured condition is good or bad. Benoit and colleagues' 2010 article situated the guidelines within the broader life-cycle sustainability assessment agenda and explained their just-in-time arrival as supply-chain social concerns rose. Because many social indicators are qualitative and depend on conduct rather than throughput, S-LCA leans on activity variables such as worker-hours to connect indicators to the functional unit. It complements environmental LCA and life-cycle costing to round out a three-pillar sustainability assessment.