Page 382 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

366 6 From LCA to Sustainability Assessment

Usually it is assumed that first an LCA or at least an LCI study of the product exists
that can then be accordingly extended.

6.3.3
Product-Related Social Life Cycle Assessment – SLCA

The third dimension of sustainability poses special difficulties for an operationali-
sation as humans are involved. Whereas humans, for ethical reasons in principle,
are not assessed in LCA (unless targeted in the impact category ‘human toxicity’),
they are present in LCC as cost factors and consumers, and finally in SLCA, their
well-being is the main content of the analysis. Thus the SLCA acts as corrective
to the two previous ‘dimensions’: a product may be environmentally compatible
and economically producible, but nevertheless not sustainable, if, for example,
favourable LCCs are obtained by inhuman working conditions in certain countries
and companies.
Even if the idea is not new, the product-related social assessment is nevertheless
52)
still at its beginning. Currently the topic is a very active area of research related
to numerous publications of which the most recent ones are outlined here.
Approaches to a uniform methodology are slowly developing, but not yet generally
observed.
Dreyer and co-worker 53) focus on the responsibility of the involved companies,
even if the products are the points of reference. Thus it is inevitable that in the
foreground processes and the involved persons are the focus of their emphasis.
The responsibility of the management of an enterprise in social issues is beyond
dispute and that can be more important than the technical processes assigned to the
product system. On the other hand, responsibility is also required for the machinery
(including safety measures) and for the environmental protection technology, if
there is any.
Weidema includes elements of cost benefit analysis (CBA) and proposes quality
54)
adjusted life years (QALYs) as a common measure for human health and human
well-being.
Norris 55) is also concerned with social and socio-economic impacts, leading to
health impairment. Norris is sceptical of an SLCA using LCA and LCC as model. He
proposes an Internet-based instrument (life cycle of attribute assessment, LCAA)
in addition to the classical life-cycle-based analysis methods. Recent advances in
Internet-based social data collection on a global scale led to a much used social
56)
‘hot-spot analysis’ and data bank. Such generic data are very important in a social
research field where individual plant owners and managers are reluctant to give
information, especially on hot topics like child labour and bad or even criminal
working conditions.

52) Projekt Gruppe ¨ Okologische Wirtschaft (1987) and O’Brian, Doig and Clift (1996).
53) Dreyer et al. (2006).
54) Weidema (2006).
55) Norris (2006).
56) Beno t et al. (2010).