LCA of an Ecolabeled Notebook - GreenDeltaTC

Goal and Scope
the frame of S-LCA, there exists basically only one endpoint category: human wellbeing.
This minimises the utility of an endpoint assessment.
Impact Categories
Considered impact categories for the social assessment are also based on the
UNEP/SETAC guidelines for S-LCA. They are as follows:
� Working conditions (WC)
� Health and safety (HS)
� Human rights (HR)
� Socio-economic repercussions (SER)
� Indigenous rights including cultural heritage (IR)
� Governance (G)
Classification
Since there are no scientific based classification models of social LCI parameters an
own approach was developed. However, it is not possible to illustrate the cause-effectchains
of every subcategory in the frame of the study.
Rating Scale
In S-LCA – in contrast to E-LCA studies – not only impacts shall be assessed, but also the
performance of considered sectors and companies. Therefore the assessment is split
into two phases: The first one assesses the performance of the sectors and companies
respectively based on the status of the indicators taking the performance of the sector/company
in relation to the situation in the country/region into account. Of course,
a company cannot be blamed for low minimum wages, high unemployment rates, or
underdeveloped infrastructure of a region, but it can improve the situation trough fair
wages, locally employed workers, or infrastructure projects.
The second phase assesses the impacts of the company/sector behaviour with regard
to the selected impact categories.
Each subcategory is assessed twice with a colour system ranging from very good performance
to very poor performance and very negative impacts to positive impacts (see
table 11). The performance assessment follows school grades.
A specific factor is assigned to every colour to allow quantification of the impacts. The
factors of all subcategories are summed up for every process and the resulting
amounts for the company/sector performance and for the impacts are divided by the
number of subcategories to take missing ones due to unavailability of data into account.
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