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Očekávání společnosti, aby firmy převzali širší zodpovědnost za dopad svých obchodních aktivit, představuje výzvu, přijímanou firmami, které si přejí vést své aktivity zodpovědným způsobem. Sociální posuzování životního cyklu (S-LCA) lze definovat jako metodu, jež se používá k hodnocení dopadů v rámci celého životního cyklu výrobku. Toto posuzování má následně zásadní dopad na sociální zdraví společnosti v kontextu sociální odpovědnosti firem. The expectation of the society that enterprises také over more responsibility for the impacts of their business activities represents a challenge accepted by companies that are willing to perform their activities in a more responsible way. S-LCA can be defined as a method used for evaluation of impacts within the entire product life cycle. Subsequently, this assessment significantly affects the social welfare in context of CSR.

Literature on the risk governance of nanotechnology places significant emphasis on the potential social impacts of nano-enabled products. However, there is limited information on which social impacts are relevant for nano-enabled products, and a methodology to monitor them to support risk governance is lacking. This chapter proposes a quantitative methodology based on Social Life Cycle Assessment (s-LCA) and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) to assess the social impacts of nano-enabled products through their life cycle. The s-LCA conceptual scheme (i.e. impacts and indicators for different stakeholders) is developed through an appraisal of literature on social impacts of products and Ethical, Legal and Social Impacts (ELSI) of nanotechnology, which is used to select suitable indicators in statistical databases. Five indicators associated with impacts of nano-enabled products, with two impacts in Worker category (professional training and non-fatal accidents) and three impacts in Community category (education, employment, research and development expenditure), were identified as relevant to compare nano-enabled products with similar functionality or nano-enabled product with their conventional counterpart. The indicators are organized within a conceptual scheme comprising benefits (education, employment and professional training) and costs (research and development expenditure and non-fatal accidents). A quantitative MCDA methodology is proposed and applied to a case study according to benefit-cost conceptual scheme. The gaps to be addressed to expand the future development of methodologies to assess social impacts of nano-enabled products are discussed.

Part 10: Sustainability and Systems Improvement; International audience; To preserve proper growth of the planet, industries have to increase sustainability of produced good according to the compliance and governance regulations for NPD (new product development). Sustainability concerns economical, environmental and social aspects; among these issues, the last theme is the less argued in literature and this paper focuses on the social life cycle assessment of products. One of the crucial aspects of S-LCA, is the definition of impact categories and involved stakeholders. This work, proposes a new S-LCA methodology, according to UNEP/SETAC framework. After the clarification of stakeholders, categories and general notions already known on S-LCA, a test case is shown where the new approach is implemented. In this use case, stakeholders from an Italian product line are analysed, then categories of attribution of social impacts are outlined. The paper offers a step-by-step procedure useful to verify the S-LCA theories currently available on a practical industrial case, defining also weaknesses that might be addressed in future studies.

A social life cycle assessment is proposed for the evaluation of the social potential impact in regard to the production and use of biomethane derived from biomass (algae and manure) in Latvia. The Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) is used to evaluate the social performances, which have been selected based on literature, statistics and legislation data. Seven alternatives are evaluated by experts and the best alternative is figured out.

The attention regarding social, economic and environmental impacts and the increase in the attention on sustainability by the customers and the other general stakeholders has led businesses to adopt several tools for sustainable development patterns and, in particular, for social development patterns. The development of social impacts’ evaluation is one of the cornerstones of products and services sustainability. Concerning that, Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA hereafter) focuses on studying the social impacts of life cycles, but as this is a relatively new analytical approach, no globally shared application tools have yet been developed. The purpose of this study is to analyze the tools of stakeholder management and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to create a pathway of integration between the tools of social responsibility, SLCA and Stakeholder Management Approach. The research has characterized two main phases; the first is devoted to the critical analysis of the literature on the subject, and specifically on SLCA methodology. The objectives to be achieved are to carry out a comprehensive review of the existing literature on the subject for developing a conceptual model for the interpretation of the behaviour observed. In conclusion, we can say that the innovative model is properly inherent in the various interpretations of the stakeholders and the assessment of social impacts of product or services.

Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) is a relatively new discipline and it is an expanding field of research. After an initial period characterized by the application of the SLCA Guidelines of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative, now practitioners are going through an in-depth and critical analysis. The epistemological and methodological aspects of SLCA are now dealt with, as a basis for defining the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of the methodology.This chapter provides an overview of where we are in SLCA, from the methodological and practical point of view, discussing new trends and approaches, and also in the context of a Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment.

Sustainability of their products and practices provides companies with a competitive set of methods and tools to maintain, improve and expand customer and supplier relationships and to ensure access to strategic markets. Companies pay a lot of attention to produce more sustainable products and contribute to the overall sustainability. Most of the companies manage to use lighter materials or change the material with a recyclable one or try to decrease the energy used for manufacturing. However most of these attempts are related to only one part of the life cycle or one aspect of sustainability. In spite the fact that sustainability is thought to be related with the environmental aspects of the product, it is a broad concept and has economic and social dimensions. This makes the evaluation of sustainability a very complex matter. On top of that, to achieve a certain level of sustainability, it is necessary to take into account the whole life cycle of products (life cycle perspective) from material extraction and manufacturing to use and disposal when a decision has to be made about sustainability performance. In order to evaluate the sustainability performance of the products it is necessary to combine a number of life cycle evaluation methodologies; life cycle assessment (LCA) for environmental aspects, life cycle costing (LCC) for economic aspects, and social life cycle assessment for (S-LCA) for social aspects. Product lifecycle management system help to manage product related information through its life cycle. However, generally the capabilities of PLM systems are limited to the operations of one company or in some cases it might have been extended to their 1st degree partners. Additionally, the information flow of the product is often restricted to the beginning of life (BOL) phase. Closed-Loop Lifecycle Management is a more recent concept which goes beyond the limits of traditional PLM systems and is targeting seamless information flow across all phases of the life cycle. Closed-loop PLM systems use product embedded identification devices (PEIDs) and enables to gather and distribute life cycle information through the life cycle of a product more precisely. This information may further be used for evaluation of the products sustainability performance. The methods and tools for sustainability assessment are constrained with the availability of data. Closed-loop PLM systems are capable of gathering life cycle data and processing it in order to make informed decisions towards sustainability. A Closed-Loop Lifecycle Management system containing a DSS configured with the holistic life cycle approach will be an efficient tool to evaluate and improve the sustainability performance of products. The proposed methodology in this dissertations benefits from the comprehensiveness of the life cycle thinking and integrates the tools for evaluation of all aspects of sustainability. It has been applied to three test cases and validated. Finally, the results of this work have been published in conferences and journal papers.

An important aspect of sustainable development is the social impacts from the consumption of goods and services. A recently developed method for social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) assesses the potential positive and negative social impacts along a product’s life cycle, while avoiding shifting negative impacts from one part of the supply chain to another. This thesis evaluated the applicability of S-LCA in three case studies, as well as a way of introducing an ethical perspective on the distribution of social impacts among stakeholders. The case study of laptop computers identified workers and the local community as the stakeholders at greatest risk of negative social impacts, with China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Thailand and Brazil being most prone to these impacts. A case study of vehicle fuels identified some fossil and some renewable fuels with high or very high risks of negative impacts, suggesting a need for strict procurement requirements on social performance for all types of vehicle fuels. A study of e-waste recycling in Pakistan revealed negative social impacts on workers and the community, while decreasing poverty by providing employment. By performing a social hotspot assessment using S-LCA methodology, much can be learned about the potential social impacts associated with a product’s life cycle, and potentially important aspects that would otherwise have been neglected can be identified. Some methodological issues of S-LCA requiring further attention are: Indicator relevance. Impact pathways between indicators and performance assessment on social issues must be examined and improved. Aggregation and weighting of impacts and indicators. With major uncertainties still present, results must be transparent, but also aggregated for the purposes of interpretation and communication. Assessment of the use phase. To be more complete, S-LCA methodology needs to be complemented with an assessment of the use phase. Introduction of context. Identifying the context of relevant stakeholders in different parts of the life cycle would allow identification of the greatest leverage in improvement of social conditions. En viktig del av hållbar utveckling är att hantera social påverkan från konsumtionen av varor och tjänster. Social livscykelanalys (S - LCA) är en metod som syftar till att bedöma positiv och negativ social påverkan av produkter under hela deras livscykel och samtidigt undvika att bara flytta negativ påverkan från en del av livscykeln till en annan. Denna avhandling utvärderar S - LCA i tre fallstudier, samt undersöker hur fördelningen av den sociala påverkan på olika intressentgrupper kan bedömas ur ett etiskt perspektiv. I en fallstudie som utfördes på en laptop identifierades arbetstagare och lokalsamhället som de intressenter, som löper störst risk för negativ social påverkan. Länder som Kina, Ryssland, Saudiarabien, Thailand och Brasilien var de som var mest kopplade till denna påverkan. En fallstudie kring fordonsbränslen visade att av de bränslen som bedömts uppvisade både en del fossila och en del förnybara bränslen höga eller mycket höga risker för negativ social påverkan, vilket tyder på att strikta upphandlingskrav gällande social prestanda behövs för alla typer av drivmedel. En studie av återvinning av elektroniskt avfall i Pakistan uppvisade påtaglig negativ social påverkan på arbetstagarna och lokalsamhället, samtidigt som återvinningen gav sysselsättning som minskar fattigdomen. Genom att använda S-LCA vid bedömningen av en produkt finns det mycket att lära om potentiell social påverkan från produktens livscykel. Viktiga aspekter, som annars riskerar att missas, kan nu identifieras med S-LCA. Metoden är dock inte färdigutvecklad, och metodfrågor som behöver ytterligare uppmärksamhet är: Relevanta indikatorer. Kopplingen mellan indikatorerna och den påverkan man försöker mäta måste undersökas närmare och förbättras. Sätt att aggregera och väga ihop påverkan. Med tanke på de osäkerheter som ännu så länge finns kring metoden måste resultaten hållas transparenta, samtidigt som sammanfattande resultat behövs för tolkning och kommunikation. Påverkan i användningsfasen. För att bli mer komplett, måste metoden kompletteras med en bedömning av social påverkan i användningsfasen. Sätta resultaten i sitt sammanhang. Utgångsläget för dem, som berörs av en produkts sociala påverkan avgör vilken hävstångseffekt en förbättring av de sociala förhållandena kan ha, och kan därmed påverka vilka åtgärder som bör prioriteras. QC 20131217

Sandra Roxana Aparcana Robles Zsfassung in dt. Sprache Wien, Univ. für Bodenkultur, Diss., 2013 OeBB

A set of indicators has been developed by the author of this work to assess the social performance of Vattenfall’s products (electricity & heat). This set of indicators has been adapted to the requirements of the International EPD® system. The aim has been to create a set of indicators that can be applied to all processes within the lifecycle. The indicators are supposed to make a best possible statement of the social performance of a companies’ product, including the most relevant issues and topics within the pillar of social science and social sustainability. The method used for the development of the indicators is the Delphi method. The Delphi process includes several rounds of reviewing. A group of experts usually carries out the reviewing. In this study five rounds of reviewing has been conducted with the help of nine experts. The first round has been an extensive literature review. The 390 indicators found in the literature have been classified according to the system and the instruction of S-LCA, which are described in the Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment of Products. The fifth round of reviewing has been the last one and consensus on the list of indicators could be reached. The outcome of the development process has been a set of 30 indicators. Not all subcategories proposed in UNEP/SETAC’s Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment of Products have been covered. The indicators have been distinguished into two categories: core and additional. Some important social issues could not be expressed in the form of an indicator. They have been added in the final outcome of the paper, the ‘socioprofile’, as additional information. The measurement and impact assessment of qualitative indicators have been a major challenge of this study. Data availability can be seen as another critical field of the study and the application of the indicators. Other studies that have been conducted focused on a lower amount of indicators. The study has shown the possibility to quantify and measure social impacts to a certain degree. The proposed indicators are aiming at a globally focused assessment of social sustainability. The inclusion of experts and the group discussions with those experts have shown the importance of these indicators. The next step in the development of social sustainability indicators is the implementation of these indicators in a practical application and the study of the outcome. To be applicable within the International EPD® system, the Product Category Rules also have to be updated to allow for a Sustainable Product Declaration.

Changes affecting how product chains function can have a profound impact on human communities. Certain social life cycle assessment (LCA) methods aim to anticipate the important social effects of changes taking place in the functioning of a product’s life cycle. They therefore must identify the groups that are most affected. This paper aims to help identify the groups affected by competition beyond those usually highlighted. The objective is to propose rules to identify the organisations involved in the social life cycle of a product within a context of competition. Once these organisations are identified, it is possible to deduce which groups are affected., Ce papier explique comment modéliser le système qui va être soumis à une analyse par ACV sociale, et comment déterminer les frontières du système (critères de coupure)

Submitted by Manuel Brandão (mbrandao@estsp.ipp.pt) on 2014-06-03T12:53:44Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DM_EduardoMidoes_2012_MEC.pdf: 4475331 bytes, checksum: b3f8478224804c5d7d44d5cb1aee6127 (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-03T12:53:44Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DM_EduardoMidoes_2012_MEC.pdf: 4475331 bytes, checksum: b3f8478224804c5d7d44d5cb1aee6127 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012

Wuhan China and Borlänge Sweden collaborate to promote sustainable business growths. This thesis, being part of sustainable business project, aims to understand how business can contribute to sustainable development and explore mechanisms of social life cycle assessment. In an effort to answer research questions and further to achieve the general purpose, a BOD online monitor case study is described and analyzed by applying both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Data collection is based on interviews and documents. In the case of BOD online monitor, the thesis identifies Boffin and Universtar companies’ CSR levels. It also observes that SLCA method is able to discover Boffin and Universtar’s social performances at life cycle impact assessment stage and disclose online monitor’s social impacts at interpretation stage. The thesis finally concludes that business’ CSR level can be evaluated from three dimensions: companies’ goals on conducting business, business operation performances and resolved problems. SLCA method is able to disclose enterprises’ social performances, discover underlying factors that might hinder corporations’ ability to contribute to sustainable development and improve product’s social at the same time.

Buying that new mobile phone may make your life easier, provide continuous access to the net and change your image, but what social impact will your action have on others? Different stakeholders along the life cycle of the mobile phone will be affected, in positive and negative ways. Who is responsible and how can we know the impact? Handling environmental impact with a life cycle perspective, for example using life cycle assessment (LCA), is today common practice. A similar technique for social impact, social and socio-economic LCA (S-LCA) is under development (Benoit and Mazijn, 2009). The aim of the current pre-study was to consider the use of S-LCA for information and communication technology (ICT) services to learn more about the product and facilitate consideration of social impact in different decision-making situations. From a company perspective, social responsibility is handled in various ways, often under the heading of CSR, corporate social responsibility. Firstly, the company’s own employees are easily targeted and acted on by providing good working conditions, fair wages and working hours, etc. Considering social impact throughout a product’s life cycle is the next step and here measures and responsibilities are less clear-cut. How is a product distributed (supply chain), how is it used and how is it finally disposed? Different stakeholders are differently affected, positively and negatively. Four companies and organisations, all partners in the Centre for Sustainable Communications, took part in this study. They currently have different experiences and degrees of activity regarding social responsibility. The telecommunications companies, Ericsson and TeliaSonera, have started to consider social aspects in their supply chain and for their consumers. Social aspects are not only considered in terms of impact of the company management but also of impact related to products (goods and services). The media organisations (Bonnier Group and the Swedish Media Association) have not handled social aspects to the same extent as the telecommunications companies, but of course their products also give rise to social impact throughout their life cycles. To enable a discussion on the usability of S-LCA, a simplified test was carried out, inspired by the ongoing work on including social aspects into LCA within the UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative (Benoit and Mazijn, 2009). This screening test was based on a selection of published and readily available information on potential social impacts along the life cycle of two defined ICT services. The goal was not to provide an assessment of social impact, but rather to give a rough sketch and reflect on possibilities and limitations with the method. The two ICT services in the test were mobile news and video conferencing, provided by a newspaper company and a telecommunications company respectively. An interesting feature of both these services was that the company providing the service was not providing the electronic device, the hardware platform of the service. This gives one more dimension in the consideration of who is responsible for social impacts with a life cycle perspective. There was a lot of information available on potential social impact for parts of the respective life cycles. This kind of information is gathered by scientists, NGOs and others. A small share of the information was compiled for the selected stakeholder groups: worker and consumer. This information indicated that there are social impacts all along the life cycle and that these may be positive or negative and of differing magnitude. As stakeholders become aware of the possible negative social impact, increasing engagement from organizations and companies in social responsibility will be requested. When companies start to consider social impacts in the supply chain, it is expected to be easier to reach the first and second tier of suppliers. However, ILO (2007) has established that the workers at the beginning of the supply chain (farthest away from the end-product) are generally the most disadvantaged. In some cases, handling e-waste is also leading to major negative social impacts. Raw material acquisition and waste management may have large implications on the social impact related to a product, with best case or worst case possibly leading to significantly different results. A life cycle perspective would facilitate identification of improvement potential. A key question is who is responsible, or rather who will accept responsibility. As there is information available for parts of the processes and stakeholders throughout the life cycle of the ICT services studied, the question remains how this information can be used by companies providing products for end-consumers. This pre-study indicates that it can be useful to apply a life cycle perspective and compile data in relation to a specific product also when considering potential social impacts. This would facilitate the inclusion of processes and stakeholders for example at the beginning of the life cycle, where impact may be considerable and negative, and make these more visible. Development of S-LCA is thus interesting in order to provide transparent and ‘standardised’ assessments of potential social impact. By providing guidelines or standards, the assessments of social impact could be interpreted and criticised more easily. The possibilities for using S-LCA to increase knowledge and ultimately improve social conditions should be further studied and developed. In the field of S-LCA there is plenty of future research to be carried out, examples of which are provided by Benoit and Mazijn (2009). One important way of getting more experience and enabling further development of the method and its practice is through performing case studies. ICT products would be an interesting field for this. QC 20101013 Development of sustainability assessment tools for ICT

Due to the escalating environmental debate, the interest and investments in new and green fuel alternatives have never been larger. However, concerns have increased over the effects that the production of biofuels might have, both on the environment and on social issues. For example, there are reports of slave-like working conditions in the Brazilian sugarcane fields and the link between biofuel production and increasing world food prices are given much space in the media. The question now is how to get a full picture of the effects and to be able to compare different fuel alternatives. There are methods for analyzing and comparing the life cycles of products, both environmentally and economically, but until now there has not been a proper methodology to perform a social assessment. However, a task force initiated under the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative has now developed a code of practice for guidance in this area that was planned to be released in January 2009. The purpose of this master’s thesis is to describe the UNEP/SETAC Code of Practice for social and socio-economical LCA and to investigate how to use the Code of Practice when assessing ethanol, biodiesel and biogas. The aim of the thesis is to decide upon the applicability of the UNEP/SETAC Code of Practice in its current state when conducted on biofuels by an outside practitioner. The research presented in this thesis consists of an initial literature review in order to increase the knowledge of sustainability, biofuels and life cycle assessment in general, and to analyse the UNEP/SETAC Code of Practice in particular. This thorough review is followed by a case study based on the knowledge and results from the preceding chapters. In this case study, the guidelines in the Code of Practice were followed and a hotspot assessment of the three biofuels was performed in order to gain a deeper understanding on how the code works and to get a perception of the user friendliness. The case study investigated the social implications surrounding the production of ethanol, biodiesel and biogas and, after extensive data collection, assessment and interpretation, it was concluded that the biofuel with the least social impact is biogas. During the social life cycle assessment it was clear that even though there was a successful assessment with an evident result, the Code of Practice needs more fine tuning in order to be successful when comparing different products. Furthermore, it was concluded that a company-specific assessment would be easier to conduct, instead of this type of generic study, since social issues are strongly linked to the performance of the company management. The thesis also provides suggestions on how to enhance the usefulness of the Code of Practice. Means must be found to circumvent the large influence of the practitioners’ subjectivity. Suggestions for achieving this are, for example, developing a universal set of indicators, databases for social aspects, and well functioning characterization models. Validerat; 20101217 (root)

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 13 (1), ISSN:0948-3349, ISSN:1614-7502

Lithium-ion batteries are considered a key component in mobile and stationary energy storage applications. However, the current technology is based on several critical materials, such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, and graphite, which are associated with various environmental and social impacts in their supply chain. While the environmental impacts of lithium-ion batteries have been investigated in numerous studies, little attention has been given to the potential social impacts. Therefore, an assessment of the social sustainability hotspots of lithium-ion batteries is carried out. The assessment is based on a spatially differentiated resource flow model of the supply chain. Data on social risks with respect to child labor, corruption, occupational toxics and hazards, and poverty are extracted from the Social Hotspots Database in openLCA. The results of the social assessment are discussed along with environmental and economic considerations to generate recommendations for improving supply chain sustainability.

This manuscript describes an innovative approach to socio-economic assessment of (advanced) engineered nanomaterials and nano-enabled products (NEPs) to support safe-and-sustainable-by-design (SSbD) decision making by industries in the early stages of product development. This semi-quantitative methodology is based on a sound conceptual framework grounded in the combination of social life cycle analysis and multi-criteria decision analysis methods and supports decision making based upon socio-economic impacts assessed over the full life cycle of a product. To facilitate its application by industries, the methodology was implemented as an Excel-based self-assessment tool. This easy-to-use, cost- and time-efficient tool can guide users through their SSbD decision making regarding newly developed nanomaterials and NEPs and can also be applied to re-evaluate existing materials and NEPs in order to improve their sustainability from a socio-economic perspective. The relatively low requirements of this tool regarding the level of efforts and expert knowledge needed for its application make it a good starting point for initial assessment to highlight socio-economic issues in the value chain. The results of this initial screening can be further used for more detailed analysis in the later stages of product development by performing a full social life cycle assessment (S-LCA).

MSocial Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) uses a life cycle perspective to assess social impacts of products, and the S-LCA guidelines describe developing the system boundaries based on a factory-level perspective. However, such a perspective may exclude stakeholders with a negative social performance which are cooperating with a factory but are not directly involved with the product under study, and it can result in a step back on corporate social responsibility (CSR). Our study aimed to align S-LCA with the CSR concept. Therefore, we designed a case study for the manufacturing sector in which we practiced expanding the system boundaries of S-LCA. Our results showed larger social risks after expanding the system boundaries due to subsidiary and supplier companies located in countries with less strict regulations than the Netherlands, which is where the main organizations and parent company existed. We conclude that system boundaries expansion can result in more complete picture of the involved organizations, and lead practitioners to approach S-LCA with the goal of improving social conditions and identify companies which deserve excellent or poor social scores. Its usefulness is mostly expected when S-LCA practitioners aim to identify social hotspots in supply chains in socially sensitive markets.