Page 207 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

CHAPTER

10

Advancing life cycle sustainability

assessment using multiple criteria

decision making

a,b
Pradip P. Kalbar , Deepjyoti Das a
a
Centre for Urban Science and Engineering (CUSE), Indian Institute of Technology Bombay,
b
Mumbai, India Interdisciplinary Programme in Climate Studies, Indian Institute of Technology
Bombay, Mumbai, India

10.1 Introduction

Life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) is now a globally adopted framework for
assessing the performance of products/services (Valdivia et al., 2013; Zamagni et al.,
2013). The framework takes into account all three dimensions of assessment, viz., environ-
mental, economic, and social (Finkbeiner et al., 2010). As proposed by Guin ee (2016), apart
from broadening the scope of impact, LCSA should also consider expanding the analysis
by incorporating issues related to economy scale, and include technological relations in
the assessment. LCSA is also expected to consider behavioral aspects, such as rebound effect
and cultural aspects (Pizzirani et al., 2014). For example, conventionally economic criteria are
used to select the products or alternatives, with increasing environmental pressures in recent
times, it has become essential to include environmental impacts and societal concerns in the
decision making. Hence, the LCSA framework should aim to choose alternatives that are
nearer to low cost and farther from adverse environmental and social impacts. Various
methods are typically used for assessing each of such aspects in LCSA, and use of systems
approach with life cycle thinking are most essential properties of LCSA (Halog and Manik,
2011). Life cycle analysis (LCA) is most commonly used for assessing the environmental
dimension (Azapagic, 2010), whereas life cycle costing (LCC) and social LCA (SLCA) are
widely used indicators for evaluating economic and social dimensions, respectively
(Naves et al., 2018; Neugebauer et al., 2015).

Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment for Decision-Making 205 Copyright # 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-818355-7.00010-5