Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) is often described as the most advanced approach for sustainability assessment, as its implementation allows for identifying trade-offs between the environmental, social and economic dimension. Yet, shortcomings for its practical implementation exist, as the three related methods – Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) – do not have the same level of methodological and practical maturity. While LCA is widely implemented and standardized through the ISO-series 14040 and 14044, consensus on how to implement SLCA and LCC is missing. In this context, the discussion on adopting the commonly followed structure of LCA for SLCA and LCC plays a key role. While LCA includes well defined characterization models, SLCA misses concrete impact category definitions and LCC lacks an impact level at all. This further leads to inconsistent assessment approaches for SLCA and LCC. In addition, lacking guidance on the indicators and impact categories selection creates further obstacles for practical implementation. All this impairs the achievement of methodological improvements. Therefore, this thesis pursues a twofold approach by addressing both – the lack of guidance as well as the methodological shortcomings of SLCA and LCC. An in-depth review of existing LCSA indicators and impact categories is carried out, which builds the basis for the methodological developments addressing relevant topics of the social and economic dimension. In a first step, a criteria-based selection of impact categories and indicators is provided for the three methods – LCA, SLCA and LCC. The considered criteria are: practicality, relevance and method robustness. The resulting Tiered approach concept includes a hierarchical structure guiding practitioners through LCSA. Therefore, the basic ‘sustainability footprint’ at Tier 1 provides a starting point with simple but meaningful indicators – including global warming potential for the environmental dimension, fair wages for the social dimension, and value added for the economic dimension. Consecutively, additional impact and cost categories are implemented towards a comprehensive assessment level. Tier 2 in this context broadens the assessment by including indicators suggested by relevant institutions, such as the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. Tier 3 also includes challenging indicators worth future consideration, such as land use and cultural heritage. Although, the implemented hierarchy itself provides focus on which impact categories and indicators to consider, it hardly contains solutions for the inherent methodological challenges. Yet, the Tier 1 level provides the basis for the methodological improvements targeted within this work. To tackle methodological differences and to align the three LCSA methods, it is focused on the different demands of SLCA and LCC. For SLCA concrete characterization models and impact descriptions are needed, while LCC requires the definition of an impact level in the first place. Accordingly, for SLCA a characterization model for fair wages is developed by also addressing the related impact pathway. With regard to the economic dimension, a new framework for economic assessments by means of Economic Life Cycle Assessment (EcLCA) is suggested defining different economic impact categories, followed by the development of a specific characterization model considering value added at Tier 1. With the fair wage characterization model a consistent and quantitative way of determining a specific set of social impacts along a product’s life cycle is presented. The inclusion of fair wages at the midpoint level allows to account for workers´ economic situation and embodies a necessary requirement for an adequate living standard. The performed case studies confirmed the general applicability of both the fair wage method and the associated database. Certain specifics of the characterization model require further investigations, such as the included inequality factor and the results´ relation to the functional unit. With the definition of the EcLCA framework and the coherent economic midpoint and endpoint impact categories as well as economic areas of protection, a broader perspective for the economic dimension within the LCSA framework is provided. Relevant relations between the midpoint and endpoint level are displayed through the defined impact pathway, e.g. the connection between a product´s or organization’s value added and an economy´s prosperity is addressed. Following on the conceptual nature of the EcLCA approach and enabling the development of concrete characterization models, a starting point is provided with a defined impact category ‘profitability’, which connects the value added indicator to an economic impact pathway. The developed characterization model allows for displaying economic impacts by means of the value added along a product´s life cycle. Therewith, the different production locations can be compared and differences and imbalances between them can be displayed. Nonetheless, the performed case studies revealed some challenges with regard to the reflection of producers far up- or downstream the supply chain. While primary data can typically be gathered for the direct producer, no economic secondary database has so far been established reflecting the up- or downstream supply chain. Despite those challenges, the impact categories considered within the ‘sustainability footprint’ represent crucial topics of production processes, by including global warming potential representing an important environmental concern, fair wage representing the workers´ situation, and profitability addressing the organizations´ performance. Furthermore, the Tiered approach as well as the methodological developments show that an alignment of the different maturity levels of LCA, SLCA and LCC (by means of EcLCA) is possible. Moreover, it shows that quantitative and applicable characterization models can be achieved for SLCA and that impact categories as well as characterization models can be defined for the economic dimension of LCSA.


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    Title :

    Enhancing life cycle sustainability assessment.
    Tiered Approach und Charakterisierungsmodelle für die Sozial- und Kostenbilanz


    Subtitle :

    tiered approach and new characterization models for social life cycle assessment and life cycle costing


    Additional title:

    Optimierung der lebenszyklusbezogenen Nachhaltigkeitsbewertung


    Contributors:

    Publication date :

    2016



    Type of media :

    Miscellaneous


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



    Classification :

    DDC:    629



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