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Theory and Practice on Social Life Cycle Assessment

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Life Cycle Engineering and Management of Products

Abstract

The social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) has emerged as a methodological approach aimed at evaluating social and socio-economic aspects of products and organisations, and their potential positive and negative impacts along their life cycle. Through the UNEP-SETAC Guidelines for S-LCA of products, recently revised and improved, and the complementary methodological sheets, the field of S-LCA started establishing a framework building on the ISO 14040 and 14044 LCA standards. As the international context becomes increasingly demanding for social issues, S-LCA offers a comprehensive approach for helping companies to be compliant with ONU’s sustainable development goals. Thanks to its complementarity with other reporting tools and standards, S-LCA can be used in combination with other techniques or tools to provide further information and help linking social impacts at the company level to the product’s life cycle stages.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.socialhotspot.org/about-shdb.html#.

  2. 2.

    https://psilca.net/.

  3. 3.

    For more information and updates, please refer to the project’s Website https://www.lifecycleinitiative.org/activities/key-programme-areas/technical-policy-advice/linking-the-un-sustainable-development-goals-to-life-cycle-impact-pathway-frameworks/.

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Correspondence to Alessandra Zamagni .

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Zamagni, A., Zanchi, L., Di Cesare, S., Silveri, F., Petti, L. (2021). Theory and Practice on Social Life Cycle Assessment. In: de Oliveira, J.A., Lopes Silva, D.A., Puglieri, F.N., Saavedra, Y.M.B. (eds) Life Cycle Engineering and Management of Products. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78044-9_7

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