On the introduction of a community resilience framework to Social Life Cycle Assessment

SLCA according to the UNEP/SETAC guidelines attempt to measure the social impacts of a product or policy with human well-being as endpoint indicator. However, the methodological sheets do not provide clear and unambiguous definition of what human well-being is and are lacking with regard to a weak capacity to identify reliable indicators to include in both Type I and Type 2 impact assessment. The aim of this article is to explore the chance to introduce ‘community resilience’ (e.g. Magis 2013) as new topic for assessment in the SLCA, compared to human well-being (Soltanpour et al., 2019). The concept of community resilience is investigated via literature to understand how it can be related to ‘human well-being’ expressed in the guidelines and how it can be operationalized for impact assessment. Results will show the possibility of community resilience assessment in SLCA for both Type I and Type 2 assessment

Measuring the immeasurable: The contribution of social sciences to the assessment of social impacts in a life cycle perspective

The UNEP/SETAC guidelines encourage researches in order to overcome some methodological issues related to Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA). Possible problems regard the operationalization and measurement of social indicators usually based on the corporate social responsibility structure and on political standards and conventions. To face these issues, possible contributes may come from the adoption of a theoretical and methodological pluralism approach based on social sciences. The aim of this study is to investigate on how social sciences may orient SLCA practitioners towards the development of new indicators related to human well-being. Focusing on social sciences, a literature review will be performed in order to see how human well-being is defined according to the several disciplines and what may be its possible indicators. Expected results regard a deeper knowledge of social realities and an increased awareness of how social sciences could contribute to develop the SLCA

Towards sustainable business models with a novel life cycle assessment method

Business model (BM) innovation for sustainability is hampered by a lack of tools for environmental assessment and guidance at the BM level. Conventional life cycle assessment (LCA) neglects the economic and socio-technical mechanisms within a BM, and tools based on the BM canvas (BMC) cannot provide recommendations substantiated by environmental data. Here, a new method, BM-LCA, is applied to a case comparing the selling and renting of jackets, using profit as basis of comparison. Results identify how business parameters influence environmental performance, permitting analysis for decoupling within a business practice. This is made possible by the unique way the method links physical life cycle and the monetary flows of a BM. Usefulness of BM-LCA is discussed relative to BM innovation, business strategy and similar tools. BM-LCA provides insights into a broad range of BM elements and emerges as useful for business strategy. By measuring BM environmental performance, it helps determine what BM to compete with and support critical analysis of business against greenwashing. BM-LCA also enables identification of BM elements in greatest need of environmental innovation. BM-LCA appears as a promising tool for guiding business companies towards sustainability, filling a space between LCA and BMC. The method offers a practical way for business and LCA experts to merge their respective knowledge

Switching the focus from product function to business profit: Introducing business model LCA

Recent years have seen much interest in business models as vehicles towards sustainability (cf. Boons & L\ufcdeke-Freund 2013). However, conventional LCA with its product focus fails to capture the environmental impacts of a business model. Here, a novel LCA methodology for assessing the environmental performance of business models is presented, Business Model LCA. The methodological innovation is underpinned by an understanding of differences between product and business: While a product is anything that can be offered to a market that might satisfy a want or need, it will by itself will not make money — a business is an arrangement of people, processes and tools around a product to enable it to make money. From a business perspective, the product is a means to an end. To reflect this relationship, BM-LCA centres its analysis on the business. A key innovation is made to the functional unit (defined as ‘profit per time unit’). From this follows the coupling of the business system with its monetary flows to the product system with its material and energy flows. To achieve this, a conventional mapping of the product’s technical system is complemented with an actor mapping. Their coupling is made via a set of equations describing socio-material interactions in the form of product-related economic exchanges of the business organisation. BM-LCA was developed through a case study comparing two business models (a sales model and a rental model) of a sustainability-dedicated company in the garment sector. The BM-LCA study produced useful and novel insights and the method enables analysis of economic decoupling in business practice. BM-LCA is also compared to other LCA approaches used for similar aims and discussed with regard to its usefulness to business model innovation for sustainability. In conclusion, BM-LCA represents an important contribution to environmental business analysis and opens up a new avenue of research where LCA and business scholars can collaborate

Environmental assessment of two business models - a life cycle comparison between a sales and a rental business model in the apparel sector in Sweden

This report presents and applies a new method for environmentally assessing business models from a life cycle perspective. The method is meant to be useful for companies to guide their business decisions toward decoupling of economic activity from environmental impact. The basis of the method is an integrated economic and environmental perspective and a functional unit based on profit is employed, after which Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is carried out. This Business Model LCA is applied on a Swedish company and their current business model (sales) compared to an alternative business model (rental). Jackets are chosen as the products to represent the business of the company. Results indicate that a company can achieve more decoupling by renting jackets instead of selling them, although the results are sensitive to some economic parameters (like rental efficiency and rental price) and to customer habits, which can significantly compromise the overall performance of the rental model. The central feature of the developed method is that, by coupling the economic and physical flows of a business model, it allows a company to directly see the impact of business decisions on their environmental performance and plan their activities accordingly

Business model life cycle assessment: A method for analysing the environmental performance of business

This paper introduces business model life cycle assessment (BM-LCA), a new method for quantifying the environmental impacts of business models. Such a method is needed to guide business decisions towards decoupling economic activity from environmental impact. BM-LCA takes the business model itself as the unit of analysis and its economic performance as the basis of comparison. It can be applied to any type of business model involving material or resource use. In BM-LCA, monetary flows are coupled to material and energy flows. The methodology expands on conventional life cycle assessment (LCA) by elaborating the goal and scope definition and dividing it into two phases. The first descriptive phase details the business models to be compared. It includes a mapping of product chain actors and identifying business operations and transactions related to the product. The second coupling phase defines a profit-based functional unit and sets up the coupling equations expressing the economic relations to the product. Thereafter, conventional LCA procedures are followed to assess environmental impacts. The key innovation on LCA methodology is the development of a functional unit that captures the economic performance of a business model and links it to a product system. BM-LCA provides thus an important link between LCA and business competitive advantage

Disaggregating the SWOT Analysis of Marine Renewable Energies

Energy transitions require strategic plans that minimize inefficiencies and maximize energy production in a sustainable way. This aspect is fundamental in the case of innovative technologies based on marine renewable energies. Marine renewable energies involve problems and advantages which imply a reconceptualization of marine space and its management. Through an holistic SWOT analysis the main strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats are highlighted in this paper, considering social, economic, legal, technological, and environmental dimensions. We disaggregate the SWOT analysis for marine renewable energy technologies in order to create an overview of pros and cons for every dimension and better identify specific hotspots and possible solutions in different fields

The Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment framework through the lens of the systemic approach

Promoting more sustainable societies, companies and customer behaviors are crucial challenges for the flourishing of societies and the well-being of citizens. Investigating and assessing the sustainability is therefore fundamental in order to enable governments, companies and customers to orient their policies, decisions and habits, respectively, towards more sustainable practices. However, so far, sustainability assessment methods show many gaps due to the complexity of this concept and the multitude of factors to include in the assessment that concur to advance or hamper more sustainable transitions. One promising framework for the assessment of sustainability is the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment. In this dissertation, the systemic approach is presented as fundamental to identify interconnections, enabling practitioners in the Life Cycle Thinking field to advance the LCSA. Thus, three different studies are presented here to show how the adoption of the systemic approach allowed to identify relevant interconnections. In the first study, monetary and physical flows were connected in an integrated way in order to assess the environmental performance of two different business models with the same economic performance. To evaluate the two business models, the Life Cycle Assessment was performed using the profit as functional unit. In the second study, the systemic approach is used to estimate, with a theoretical approach, the level of circularity of a territorial system (at meso-macro level) through the creation of a circularity index based on the structure of the Life Cycle Assessment. The third research reports a preliminary literature review of the concept of well-being in the social sciences. The study highlights how the absence of a systemic approach in the assessment of social performance within the Social Life Cycle Assessment can lead to underestimate the relationships that take place within a system, preventing the social performance of a company from being scientifically assessed in terms of improving or maintaining the level of well-being of its stakeholders. As results, the three studies reveal important interconnections to keep in mind, and possible approaches or methods to apply in sustainability research