SLCA

Question 1

Background

Answer 1

• Efforts to promote sustainable development must take account of people (e.g. location and age, living conditions, ambitions and opportunities)
• Key international declarations emerging from Rio 1992 emphasized: human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development
• Human-centered focus is reflected in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
• …and is still a focus of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), adopted in Sept 2015

Question 2

Social Sustainability

Answer 2

• Social sustainability is one aspect of sustainability or sustainable development:
  – encompasses human rights, labour rights and corporate governance
• Future generations should have
  – the same or greater access to social resources
  as the current generation (“inter-generational equity”)
  – equal access to social resources within
  the current generation
  (“intra-generational equity”)

Question 3

Bringing Social Impacts into LCA

Answer 3

• UNEP SETAC Task Force Phase started in 2004
  – Literature study
  – Case Studies
  – Feasibility study
• 2009: publication of the Guidelines (2006-2009)
• 2013: publication of the final versions
  of the Methodological Sheets
• 2017 - 2020: revision of the Guidelines
  and publication in 2020
• 2021: publication of the revised Methodological
  Sheets

Question 4

Social LCA Guidelines

Answer 4

Aim is 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 in place, for example for their public procurement, etc.

Question 5

Which guideline exist?

Answer 5

UNEP/SETAC Guidelines for S-LCA of Products
and Organizations

This 2020 publication provides an updated directive for the practice of S-LCA closely following the LCA methodology

Question 6

What are Social Impacts?

Answer 6

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

Question 7

What is S-LCA?

Answer 7

• S-LCA is a methodology to assess the social impacts of products and services across their life cycle and provides information on social and socio-economic
  aspects for decision-making to improve the social performance of an organization and the well-being of stakeholders
• The S-LCA Guidelines “provide a roadmap, a body of knowledge, and light to assist in the journey of stakeholders engaging in the assessment of social and
  socio-economic impacts of products life cycle”
• S-LCA follows the same four phases as environmental LCA in an iterative process

Question 8

Social Handprinting: Positive Impacts

Answer 8

• First time that Positive Impacts are proactively mentioned throughout the
  Guidelines!
• Positive impacts are benefits from the product life cycle that make a positive contribution to the improvement of human well-being, i.e. beneficial impacts
  (as opposed to negative impacts being detrimental)
• They can be assessed by looking at positive effects experienced by affected stakeholders or through potentially positive proxies, such as positive social
  performance or social impacts
• 3 Type of Positive Impacts
  – Type A: Positive social performance going beyond business as usual
  – Type B: Positive social impact through presence
  – Type C: Positive social impact through product utility

Question 9

Conducting an S-LCA Study

Answer 9

like LCA:

• Definition of Goal & Scope
• Inventory Analysis
• Impact Assessment
• Interpretation

Question 10

Goal & Scope (G&S)

Answer 10

• Purpose, object, and methodological framework are
  determined in this phase
• Strongly encouraged to have participation of
  stakeholders in the G&S development process
• Goal – Why is the study being conducted? Who is the
  target audience? What do you want to assess? Is it
  intended to support decision-making?
• Scope – clarifies the object of the study and
  determines its methodological framework
  – Functional unit
  – Reference flow
  – Product system
  – System boundaries
  – Activity variables
  − Stakeholders
  − Type of impact assessment method
  − Data collection strategies
  − Data quality requirements
  − Allocation procedures
  − Interpretation planned
  − Assumptions and value choices
  − Limitations

Question 11

S-LCA guidelines: assessment framework

Answer 11

6 stakeholder groups & 40 subcategories

6: Worker, value chain actors, society, local community, consumers, children

–> Classification is not an either/or decision but a complementary one

Question 12

Functional unit (FU)

Answer 12

• Function = what is offered by the investigated product or service in measurable terms
• FU = defines quantitatively the object of the study

Question 13

Reference flow

Answer 13

• measure of the outputs from processes in a product system required to fulfil the FU
   Translates the abstract FU into specific product flow
   Starting point for building the product system model
   Provides a reference for the „weight“ of the different enterprises in the supply chain

Question 14

Goal & Scope ‒ Functional Unit & Reference Flow

Answer 14

LCA:
* In LCA indicators/impacts (e.g. CO2 emissions) can be easily referred to a functional unit (e.g. Y kg CO2 per T-Shirt) and aggregated over the life cycle
* Reason: environmental aspects can directly be related to processes/products S-LCA

S-LCA:
* In S-LCA, In LCA indicators/impacts (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:
– Data and indicators is often qualitative and semi-quantitative
– Social aspects result from the behavior of a company rather than from a product

Challenge 1: Relating indicators and impacts to the functional unit!

Question 15

Social Life Cycle Inventory (LCI)

Answer 15

• Phase of a S-LCA where
  – data is collected
  – LCI results obtained
• Operational steps:
  – Define location of the processes (country, region) and when possible, the organisations which are involved
  – Screening data collection, using generic data, hotspots assessment
  – Specific data collection
  – Validation of a data
  – Relating data to functional unit and unit process (when applicable)
  – etc.

Question 16

Social Life Cycle Inventory (Data Collection) - hotspot assessment

Answer 16

 Hotspot identification as a prioritization tool to identify in which areas of the product supply chains we should dig deeper

Example: Social Hotspot database (since 2009)
→ Provides information on sector and/or country level regarding the risk or opportunity that a social aspect occurs

Question 17

Social Life Cycle Inventory – Challenges of Data Collection

Answer 17

• LCA:
  – Databases for generic data on relevant inputs/outputs are available
  – Useful, because impacts are usually a result of the processes
• SLCA:
  – Databases are lacking (or show risks only)
  – Impacts are more a result of the conduct of the company…
  – Site specific data collection is ideally needed

Question 18

UNEP/SETAC/LCI Methodological Sheets

Answer 18

• Available for each of the 6 stakeholder group
• Provide more guidance on how to conduct a S-LCA,
  i.e. how to assess the 40 subcategories

Question 19

Example – Local community - Respect of Indigenous Rights - Limitations

Answer 19

Two main problems:
(1) Good data sources are lacking and most often come from NGO reports
(2) There is a limited awareness on the organizations’ level
– That then often lead to negligence of the matter
– Furthermore, violations of indigenous rights in most case occur at the far up- or downstream ends of supply chains and remain unseen from an organization’s
perspective

Question 19

Impact Assessment

Answer 19

2 types:
1. If a practitioner aims to describe a product system, with a focus on its social performance, he/she will use the
–> Reference Scale Approach.

2. If a practitioner aims to predict the consequences of the product system, with an emphasis on assessing longer-term potential social impacts, he/she will use the
   –> Impact Pathway Approach.

• The two methods have not had the same history of development and are not at the same level development and implementation
• The Reference Scale approach is relatively young but is perational with numerous case studies
• Impact Pathway studies chiefly pertain to the field of research, but several documented pathways are now available and applicable

Question 20

Impact Assessment

Answer 20

Many authors suggest to stayat the subcategory level
 More transparent
 Aspect, where action can be taken.

Question 21

Impact Assessment: Reference Scale Approach

Answer 21

• Reference scales are ordinal scales, typically comprised of 1 to 5 levels where each level corresponds to a performance reference point (PRP)
• Reference scales are developed by selecting performance indicators (PIs) for each position (or PRP) on the reference scale.
• The PIs are quantitative or qualitative markers of performance that underlie each of the PRPs comprised in the reference scale
• Ascending Reference Scales: e.g. from -2 to +2
• Descending Scale: very low risk / very high risk

Question 22

Impact Assessment: Aggregation and Weighting

Answer 22

• Can occur at many points in the impact assessment phase
• Can be applied to aggregate indicators into social subcategories but also to produce a set of stakeholders’ level performances, aggregate subcategory results into impact categories or to a single overall score
• It is recommended to not aggregate positive and negative impacts because impacts occur on the level of individuals or groups of individuals and, thus, positive impacts do not make up for negative ones
• Aggregation of results should always be done very carefully to avoid misinterpretation and loss of context
• Weights represent the assignment of the relative importance (or contribution) of each indicator to the performance of a specific impact subcategory
• When weights are not defined or have the same value, all indicators are assumed to have equal relevance

Question 23

Impact Assessment: Impact Pathway Approach

Answer 23

• Based on social mechanisms
• Belongs to a certain impact (sub)category
• Do not have a strong focus on stakeholder groups unlike the RS approach
• Give general measures/values for selected social consequences through midpoint and/or endpoint indicators

Challenge 3: Lack of application of characterization models and impact pathways and development of new ones

Qualitative Pathways:
- combine finding of different disciplines of social and natural science
- finding contribute to explanation of social interrelations

Quantitative Pathway:
- following mechanistic modelling approach oriented on E-LCIA (e.g. human health by DALY)
- following regression-based modelling approach on the basis of economic regression modelling

Question 24

Interpretation

Answer 24

Steps:
* Completeness check – have all the relevant issues outlined in the G&S been addressed in the inventory and impact assessment?
* Consistency check – are the methods applied in inventory and impact assessment and the data used consistently applied throughout the study and in accordance with the G&S?
* Uncertainty, sensitivity, and data quality check –
– Uncertainty analysis
– Scenario analysis
– Sensitivity analysis and data quality check
* Materiality assessment – further interpretation of results to determine the significance of selected issues; identifying significant social performances, impacts, risks, stakeholders’ categories, etc.
* Conclusions, limitations, and recommendations

Question 25

Communication

Answer 25

Should be:
- reliable, transparent, relevant, accessible, clear

• Positive impacts that go beyond the organization’s social footprint (or handprints) and footprints (negative impacts) resulting from an S-LCA must be reported separately to allow a transparent presentation of positive and negative impacts
• Internal communication (B2B – business to business) aims to:
  – Identify potential areas and actions for improvement
  – Support internal decision makers
  – Support monitoring efforts towards improvement
• External communication (B2C – business to consumer):
  – Short, simple, less detailed messages
  – Self-declared claims and labels are the primary mediums to communicate social impacts and performances to consumers
  – Intended to communicate the product doesn’t violate human rights or come from sweat shop conditions

Question 26

Social Organizational LCA (SO-LCA)

Answer 26

• New addition to the 2020 Guidelines!
• “SO-LCA is a compilation and evaluation of the social and socio economic aspects and the positive and negative impacts of the activities associated with the organization as a whole or a portion thereof adopting a life cycle perspective.”