Page 116 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

112 5. Development and applicability of life cycle impact assessment methodologies

5.4.2.2 Social impact assessment
Social impact assessment is a technical means to analyze and evaluate the impact and
result of policies, projects, events, activities, and so on in social aspect. Social impact assess-
ment is a specific social science research method applied to policies or projects, which is
aimed at understanding the situation, reasons, and results of social life. Scientific knowledge
and methods will be used to analyze the social changes, impacts, and results caused by pol-
icies or projects, and useful knowledge or policies will be offered to reduce negatives and
achieve effective management (Benoıˆt et al., 2009).

5.4.2.3 Social life cycle assessment
Social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) is an evaluation tool used to evaluate potential positive
or negative effects of a product in its whole life cycle in social aspect, including the process of
raw material mining, production, distribution, application, reuse, maintenance, recycling,
and final disposal. The S-LCA can not only be used alone but also combined with E-LCA,
supplementing the S-LCA of a product (Benoıˆt et al., 2009). The E-LCA also has the same tech-
nical framework as LCA, as shown in Fig. 5.1, meaning that the S-LCA is the expansion of the
LCA in social aspect.
The generic and fixed-point data will be used to evaluate the social life cycle (supply chain,
including service stage and disposal stage) assessment of a product. The difference between
an S-LCA and other social impact assessment tools is the object (products and service) and its
range (the whole life cycle). In an S-LCA, the social contents of evaluated products have pos-
itive or negative effect on stakeholders, directly. The effect may be connected with the impact
of enterprise behavior, socio-economic process, and social capital, and the indirect impact of
stakeholders will also be taken into consideration.
An S-LCA doesn’t have an aim of judging whether a product should be produced or not;
nor can an S-LCA give a report to stakeholders by itself, but record utility of a product. The-
oretically, an S-LCA has multiple uses, even to evaluate things that may obviously endanger
society (such as weapons). An S-LCA will provide social information for decision-makers,
encourage the exchange of ideas about production and consumption in all aspects of society,
improve work efficiency and finally aim at benefits of stakeholders (Benoıˆt et al., 2009).

5.4.3 Technical framework
5.4.3.1 Goal and scope definition
The goal definition is the first step of an S-LCA, which should describe the intended use
and ambition of the S-LCA; and then specific research can be defined to achieve the goal un-
der the constraint conditions.
The second step is to confirm the scope of the research. As a part of the scope definition, the
productions and functional units should be defined. On the basis of this information, the
product system can be modeled by using the process data or in/output data. In the stage
of scope definition, the depth of research should also be defined, and it is necessary to decide
which units need general data, or need special data collection.
The stage of goal and scope definition includes: expatiation of the object of study (includ-
ing goals, product functions, product utility, functional units, and so on); the definition