Life cycle sustainability assessment-based tools

Abstract

This chapter establishes a baseline of ideas of what Life Cycle Thinking means: going beyond the traditional focus, understanding and including the whole environmental, social, and economic implications of decision-making processes to identify potential conflicts, synergies, and trade-offs. The life cycle methodologies for sustainability assessment are described, providing an overview of the tools and criteria currently applied, available software and databases, and ongoing challenges. While Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a consolidated tool, based on the ISO standards, Life Cycle Costing (LCC), the tool aimed at the assessment of the economic domain using a life cycle perspective, has not been widely integrated into sustainability assessment until the last decade. Concerning the social dimension, Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) is still at an early stage of development, but it is a promising methodology to face the challenge of integrating the social aspects towards a holistic approach to sustainable development.