Welcome to Life Cycle Talks! A series of talks presenting the research front to keep you up to date with the science and application of the life cycle perspective. Our guest is Mathias Lindkvist, postdoctoral researcher in Sustainability Assessment and Management at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. He will give an introduction to the research field of Social life cycle assessment and answer the question “can social life cycle assessment be used to address all important aspects of social sustainability?” Mathias will present results on how to define the human well-being that Social life cycle assessment aims to support. Furthermore, he will introduce us to the possibilities of mapping the cause-effect relationships that lead from the product chain to the impacts on this very human well-being.

Social life cycle assessment (SLCA) is still a quite novel method for assessing and managing social impacts from activities along products’ supply chains. The method aims to contribute to social sustainability and in particular human well-being. In parallel to research on SLCA, a new standard on SLCA is under development within the ISO framework.

“This research on an updated definition of human well-being could open up for improving product chains when it comes to their impact. Not only on health and obvious issues such as slave labor but also meaningfulness, belonging, freedom and other important social sustainability aspects. To make Social life cycle assessment actually contribute to this social sustainability, we also need to understand the opportunities for and limitations to finding how activities in the product chain have influence on human well-being in the end” says Mathias Lindkvist.

Speaker

Mathias Lindkvist is a postdoctoral researcher in Sustainability Assessment and Management at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. His research interest is combining broad sustainability assessments with qualitative and quantitative social science.

More about Social LCA

The 2020 UNEP guidelines on social life cycle assessment. Use together with the methodological sheets found below. The guidelines both give guidance and are a synthesis of the research field until 2020.

To the guidelines

The 2021 UNEP methodological sheets for social life cycle assessment. Use together with the guidelines found above. The sheets give additional explanations and examples when using the reference scale approach in social life cycle assessment.

2021 UNEP methodological sheets

More about this research

Towards social sustainability effective supply chains of innovative and established products: Defining the human wellbeing to support

Authors: Lindkvist, M. & Ekener, E.

To the publication

Insights on social-LCA in practice in Sweden. Authors: Lindkvist, M. & Rydberg

To the publication

About Life Cycle Talks

Life Cycle Talks is a series of talks presenting the research front to keep you up to date with the science and application of the life cycle perspective. Life Cycle Talks are produced by the Innovation cluster for the life cycle perspective, with funding from the Swedish Energy Agency and partners in Swedish Life Cycle Center.