Page 17 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

1.4 Tools and actions in LCT 11
information on a variety of impact categories to be displayed in product labeling (Toniolo
et al., 2019a).

1.4.2 Life cycle costing, social life cycle assessment, and life cycle sustainability
assessment
In designing, manufacturing, delivering, using, recovering, and disposing products, var-
ious requirements have to be integrated with environmental aspects: feasibility, convenience,
security, acceptability; often conflicting requirements have to be fulfilled. Therefore, to sup-
port complex decisions, multidimensional approaches are necessary (Mazzi et al., 2016). Both
scientists and companies have recently moved in this direction, extending the LCA model to
economic and social dimensions.
To be honest, the concept of environmental LCC predates LCA: life cycle cost refers to all
costs associated with the system in a defined temporal life cycle (Blanchard and Fabrycky,
1998). Recently, the LCA community has come closer to this concept with the aim of integrat-
ing financial data and cost information with environmental life cycle metrics. Then, LCC has
become the acronym of the tool which, consistently with LCA model, across the product’s life
cycle, includes all costs borne by different actors with different perspectives and at different
times (Hunkeler and Rebitzer, 2003). A code of practice for LCC has been published by the
Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry for evaluating decisions with consistent
systems boundaries as a component of product sustainability assessments (Swarr et al., 2011).
In a company perspective, LCC is a key tool for sustainable business, because it helps in giv-
ing the right signal on economic implications of sustainable production for the decision-
maker as well as giving priority to the most cost-effective environmental improvements
(Hannouf and Assefa, 2016).
The SLCA is a methodological approach aimed at evaluating social and socioeconomic as-
pects of products and their potential positive and negative impacts along their life cycle. So-
cial impacts are those that may affect stakeholders along the product life cycle and may be
linked to company behavior, socioeconomic processes, and impacts on social capital
(Benoıˆt and Mazijn, 2009). From a company perspective, one of the main added values of
SLCA is the possibility to spend the results of social evaluation on the market. This could
be achieved, for example, by means of a social label (Zamagni et al., 2011).
SLCA is still not widespread because it suffers from a double difficulty: definition and ap-
plication. SLCA encompasses unquantifiable issues of ethics and values with holistic and per-
sonnel perspectives, such as active citizenship, well-being and happiness, preserving
sociocultural diversity, and meeting basic needs (Mattioda et al., 2015). Recent efforts to fa-
cilitate the practicality of SLCA are directed to solve the lack of available data and the diffi-
culty to evaluate immaterial impacts with undefined cause-effect relationships
(Weidema, 2018).
Concerning life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA), definitions are not yet carved in
stone. Two main definitions of LCSA exist. Kl€ opffer and Renner (Kl€ opffer, 2008) propose
to calculate the LCSA as the sum of the three studies: LCA, LCC, and SLCA; thus, LCSA
broadens LCA methodology including economic and social aspects in the life cycle evalua-
tion. Guin ee et al. (2011) start from the previous definition and add two dimensions of