UNEP 2020 Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment of products and Organizations and their Pilots.

Session
WE.2.B || Social Life Cycle Assessment of Products

Authors
Traverso, Marzia; Benoit-Norris, Catherine; Valdivia, Sonia; Finkbeiner, Matthias; Schaubroeck, Thomas; Berger, Markus; Neugebauer, Sabrina; Arcese, Gabriella; Russo Garrido, Sara; Ekener, Elisabeth; Mankaa, Rose Nangah; Mankaa, Rose Nangah

Abstract
The first guideline of S-LCA was published in 2009 as a project of UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative. In the last ten years, further developments and implementations have been carried out, defining further the methodology, its indicators and impact assessment methods. It was time to collect all those developments and enhancements and present it in a new and now the current version of Guidelines for S-LCA of products and organizations. The project officially started in September 2017 and received funds from the UN Environment´s Life Cycle Initiative since May 2018. The project consists of two phases: 1) a methodological revision and 2) a pilot phase. The first phase was successfully concluded with the publication of the new final version of the Guidelines in December 2020. It aims to guide Life cycle assessment experts and non-experts to assess social impact of product and organizations, respectively named: social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) and social organizational life cycle assessment (SO-LCA) in different sectors. The second phase started in November 2019 and will be concluded in July 2021 with the publication of a compendium document which presents the pilots and their specific results. Nine pilot projects have been conducted. Those projects cover different sectors, geographical locations and dimensions of the organization involved. Sectors involved are: food, cosmetic, raw materials, automotive and waste sector. All phases of the S-LCA or SO-LCA have been implemented starting from the definition of the goal and scope, including chosen stakeholder categories and system boundaries, to quantify life cycle inventories and finally calculating impact assessment results. Most pilots were able to collect primary data along the product life cycle. An overview on the results of the pilots with an outlook to the future, will be given during the presentation.