Social Life Cycle Assessment Methodology to Capture “More-Good” and “Less-Bad” Social Impacts—Part 1: A Methodological Framework

Social life cycle assessment (SLCA) systematically assesses the social impacts of the entire life cycle of a product system or service that stretches from extraction and processing of raw material to recycling and final disposal. Most SLCA techniques highlight negative impacts and their reductions, while positive social impacts and their increments have received less attention. Positive social impacts highlight chances for improving human well-being and present a complete picture of a product’s overall social impact. The literature shows that norms for defining positive impacts and methodologies for assessing them are not yet fully established and retain lacunae, which can lead to conflicts in the usage of the term “positive impacts”. Therefore, we develop a novel SLCA methodology that can straightforwardly distinguish between the “good” and “bad” social state at the subcategories in the latest version of methodological sheets for SLCA. Here, we refrain from using the terms “positive” and “negative” as those terms retain scattered consensus; instead, we use the fresh terms “good” and “bad”, which are simpler to understand. To describe the positive changes in good and bad states, we introduce two new terms into SLCA: “more-good” (improvements within the good domain) and “less-bad” (improvements within the bad domain). Good and bad social domains are distinguished using compliance levels (e.g., industry standards), referred to as baseline requirements. Social impacts were evaluated using the social performance index (SPI). The SPI is computed by multiplying social performance levels with working hours at the factory/company level. Social performance levels are evaluated using a decision tree and a systematically proposed set of indicators representing basic requirements and good and bad domains of each subcategory. Working hours were used as an activity variable, estimated using a working hour model. This enables the application of the SPI across the supply chain of a product by linking social impacts to the time spent on each activity.