The 2020 edition of the Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment of Products and Organizations has been published!
Since its first edition in 2009, the practice of social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) has evolved from a small circle of academic practitioners to one that now includes stakeholders from industry, policy makers, and business. This means having updated information and guidelines that do not need prior understanding of lifecycle approaches. It also means ensuring that the right tools are in the hands of those who can inform the decision-making processes. These updated Guidelines fulfills both these objectives.
Because different S-LCA methods have diverging purposes and applications, these 2020 Guidelines do not dictate one path but rather explain the strengths and challenges of different approaches to solve multiple questions. Each section defines the main steps, provides examples and directs the user to additional resources and references.
On January 21, over 170 participants took part in the virtual event to launch the updated 2020 edition of the Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment of Products and Organizations.
These new Guidelines are a helpful reference regardless if you are new to S-LCA methods or an expert. The document can be found here:
The pilot projects applying the S-LCA Guidelines is ongoing, running throughout 2021.
We are organizing road-testing of the revised guidelines during 2020/2021. This early pilot testing will provide feedback that will be included in the revised Guidelines. The full experiences gained throughout the process
including the narrative and results of each pilot will be compiled in a complementary document to the new SLCA Guidelines expected to be published in late 2021.
For further information, please contact catherine@socialhotspot.org, marzia.traverso@inab.rwth-aachen.de or matthias.finkbeiner@tu-berlin.de