1. The Role of indicators in Social Life Cycle Assessment: results from a literature review Silvia Di Cesare1, Federica Silveri2, Luigia Petti1 1 Department of Economic Studies, Università degli Studi "G. D'Annunzio", Pescara, Italy 2 IRSTEA, UMR ITAP - ELSA, Montpellier, France
Introduction:
Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) is a technique that aims to assess the social and socio-economic aspects of products and their potential positive and negative impacts along their life cycle (UNEP/SETAC 2009).
This paper aims at performing a review of the social indicators used in the impact assessment phase, both in studies of S-LCA and Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA), in order to build a comprehensive and state-of-the-art picture of this specific methodological aspect.
Method: The methodology used to conduct the study was a literature review, in which the various types of indicators were categorised.
The search engines were: Google Scholar, Scopus and the Discovery browser (by EBSCO Host).
E-LCA
The use of qualitative indicators is generally limited.
In E-LCA indicators are generally determined top down by experts.
“Indicators are ‘pointers’ to the state of the impact categories (and/or subcategories) being evaluated by the S-LCA. Indicators may be quantitative, qualitative or semi qualitative” (Paragahawewa et al. 2009).
Subjective data are sometimes the most appropriate indicators.
It is important to determine relevant indicators using a
bottom up approach with stakeholder participation.
CSR /
ISO 26000
Principles of CSR may be interesting in defining subjects of interest and indicators.
The Methodological Sheets offer a stakeholder-based LCA framework for many performance indicators. It consider additional social indicators from a wide range of generic and site-specific data sources.
S-LCA
The indicators developed in the setting of reporting projects can, to some extent, be monitored in the context of Social LCA.
GRI
If S-LCA indicators are developed only in a top down manner they may not represent the views and priorities of the impacted people or their communities.
SIA
The indicators currently used in social, express clearly and effectively (are significant for) social impacts of products/services?
Discussion and Future developments:
Out of 483 indicators detected: 17% of them are quantitaive indicators, 56% are semi-quantitaive and 27% are qualitative (descriptive). This breakdown should highlight, however, the effort spread among the authors to express, as far as possible, the indicators as quantitative variables.
The complexity of the topic indicator was highlighted:
The UNEP/SETAC Taskforce’s indicators assess the social context surrounding the unit processes. Some “generic” indicators look at the average social conditions of sector, country, region as it is proposed in the Guidelines. Without specifying the social agents responsible for the social conditions observable at the regional and sectoral level, it is clear that the sources of the stressors are not of a technical nature but, instead, of an organisational nature and therefore belong to the sociosphere. Other indicators clearly assess the enterprises, as some are explicitly related to the management practices (Parent et al. 2010).
Almost all indicators are tailored for specific purposes‏‏ by researchers, who choose a list of indicators based on their own experience, resulting in heterogeneous lists that differ from one approach to another.
Regarding positive social indicators, two main concepts can be found in the reviewed literature:
Ekvall (2010) states that the concept of positive indicator (and of the impacts that it assesses) is related to the concept of freedom: If a positive indicator is used, it can be measured in terms of value added in free countries. Value added in partly free countries can then be included in the calculation at half value. If a negative freedom indicator is used, the calculation includes the value added in countries that are not free plus half the value added in partly free countries. This approach will describe to what extent the product contributes to economies in countries that are politically free (or not free).
Positive indicators are clearly specified in Vinyes et al. (2013): «[p]ositive indicators are those that have a positive contribution to sustainability (social indicators)».
There is wide agreement that indicator-sets for the purpose of S-LCA are needed. The Taskforce did not develop a universal indicator-set as a basis for all further S-LCA applications. It is still a challenge to come up with an agreed universal set of indicators that covers the social aspects in all social, economic and political contexts.
References:
Benoît C. & Vickery-Niederman G. (2010). Social Sustainability Assessment Literature Review. [Available at: Accessed on: 05th November 2014]
Ekvall T. (2010). Nations in social LCA. Int J Life Cycle Assess (2011) 16:1–2. DOI /s
Grießhammer R., Benoît C., Dreyer L.C., Flysjö A., Manhart A., Mazijn B., Méthot A.-L. & Weidema B. (2006). Feasibility Study: Integration of social aspects into LCA. [Available at: Accessed on: 03rd November 2014]
Paragahawewa U., Blackett P. & Small B. (2009). Social Life Cycle Analysis (S-LCA): Some Methodological Issues and Potential Application to Cheese Production in New Zealand. [Available at: Accessed on: 4th November 2014]
Parent J., Cucuzzella C. & Revéret J.-P. (2010). Impact assessment in SLCA: sorting the sLCIA methods according to their outcomes. Int J Life Cycle Assess (2010) 15:164–171. DOI /s
UNEP/SETAC (2009). Life Cycle Initiative. Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment of products. [Available at: Accessed on: 4th November 2014]
Vinyes E., Olivier-Solà J., Ugaya C., Rieradevall J. & Gasol C.M. (2013). Application of LCSA to used cooking oil waste management. Int J Life Cycle Assess (2013) 18:445–455. DOI /s z.