Catherine Benoît Norris

Amazon · Sustainability

Sustainable food consumption studies have largely focused on promoting human health within ecological limits. Less attention has been paid to social sustainability, in part because of limited data and models. Globally, agriculture has one of the highest incidences of forced labour, with exploitative conditions enabled by low margins, domestic labou...

Purpose and context This paper aims to establish principles for the increased application and use of life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA). Sustainable development (SD) encompassing resilient economies and social stability of the global system is growingly important for decision-makers from business and governments. The “17 SDGs” emerge as a...

The Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) of Products provide a roadmap and a body of knowledge to help stakeholders in the assessment of social and socio-economic impacts of products’ life cycles, their related value chains and organizations. Awareness about value chain social issues such as child labor used for harvesting cotton, un...

Due to its size and intense use of resources, the pulp and paper industry is responsible for many devastating environmental impacts such as carbon pollution and wildlife species’ extinction. While these environmental impacts have been investigated in numerous studies through environmental life cycle assessment, little attention has been given to th...

Being one of the largest industrial sectors in the world, the pulp and paper industry size and intense use of resources, along with unsustainable operations such as discharging many pollutants in surrounding water bodies, make this industry responsible for many devastating environmental impacts. In some cases, this industry is also responsible for...

Net Positive may well be the buzzword of this decade. Beyond the noise, it has the potential to be a transformational movement, helping businesses to redefine their role in society, their social purpose. As an idea, it simplicity and candor make it both extremely attractive and powerful. It poses a great question and sets a challenge: Can we give m...

Due to its size and intense use of resources, the pulp and paper industry is responsible for many devastating environmental impacts such as carbon pollution and wildlife species’ extinction. While these environmental impacts have been investigated in numerous studies through environmental life cycle assessment, little attention has been given to th...

This article introduces a process that can be used by companies to obtain an increasingly precise picture of their supply chain social footprint (negative impacts) and identify potential social handprints (i.e., changes to business as usual that create positive impacts) using social organizational life cycle assessment (SO-LCA). The process was dev...

The adoption of renewable energy technologies in developing nations is recognized to have positive environmental impacts; however, what are their effects on the electricity supply chain workers? This article provides a quantitative analysis on this question through a relatively new framework called social life cycle assessment, taking Malaysia as a...

Purpose Social sustainability may be assessed using a variety of methods and indicators, such as the social footprint, social impact assessment, or wellbeing indices. The UNEP guidelines on social life cycle assessment (sLCA) present key elements to consider for product-level, life cycle-based social sustainability assessment. This includes guidanc...

Our study illustrates how consumer social risk footprints can assist in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Combining the Social Hotspots Database (SHDB) and the Eora global multi-regional input-output table, we use input-output analysis to calculate a consumer social risk footprint (SF) of nations' imports. For our SFs, we select f...

In this study, we innovatively apply multiregional input-output analysis to calculate corruption footprints of nations and show the details of commodities that use the most employment affected by corruption (EAC), as they flow between countries. Every country's corruption footprint includes its domestic corruption and the corruption imported by glo...

The electronics industry has been a leader in understanding how to incorporate a triple bottom line approach into their operations. However, there is only a nascent understanding of the social impacts of the life cycles of electronic products. By providing an examination of the specific case of the mobile phone life cycle, this research advances th...

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a technique to study the environmental impacts of products from cradle-to-grave that was developed at the end of the 1960s and standardized by the International Standards Organization (ISO) at the end of the millennium. The discussion and research efforts to broaden the scope of the tech-nique to include social impact...

Data collection, or the inventory step, is often the most labor-intensive phase of any Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study. The S-LCA Guidelines and numerous authors have recommended generic assessment in this first phase of an S-LCA. In an effort to identify the social hotspots in the supply chains of 100 product categories during just a few months'...

It is not easy to define the fast-evolving social life cycle assessment (LCA) field. Four years after the publication of the social LCA guidelines by UNEP, the area of research is still defining itself. Perhaps, as Jørgensen (2012) puts it, social LCA is still striving to attain maturity. This might be caused by (1) confusion on the goal and scope...

The analysis of the social impacts of product supply chains is getting substantial inter-est from corporations that are becoming increasingly engaged in improving their per-formances in this area. Social life cycle assessment (LCA) is a framework and technique that allows for the generation, organization, assessment, and communication of social imp...

One emerging tool to measure the social-related impacts in supply chains is Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA), a derivative of the well-established environmental LCA technique. LCA has recently started to gain popularity among large corporations and initiatives, such as The Sustainability Consortium or the Sustainable Apparel Coalition. Both hav...

The analysis of social impacts of product supply chains is receiving substantial interest from corporations and their stakeholders. Social LCA is a technique that allows for the generation, organization, assessment and communication of product life cycles' social impacts. The Social Hotspots Database provides a three layered system to assess the po...

Purpose In May 2009, the Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment of Products (the Guidelines) were launched at the occasion of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 26000 (Social Responsibility) meeting in Quebec City, Canada. Developed by a United Nations Environment Programme/Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistr...

Social life cycle assessment (SLCA) is a technique to measure social and socio-economic impacts of product life cycles. The social hotspots database (SHDB) is an overarching, global model that eases the data collection burden in SLCA studies. It enables supply chain visibility by providing the information decision-makers need to prioritise unit pro...

PurposeAuthors of different sustainability journals, including authors of articles in past issues of the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment have acknowledged the rising interest and the pressing need for a social and socio-economic life cycle assessment methodology and identified challenges in its development and implementation. Social...

Summary Practitioners of life cycle assessment (LCA) have recently turned their attention to social issues in the supply chain. The United Nations life cycle initiative's social LCA task force has completed its guidelines for social life cycle assessment of products, and awareness of managing upstream corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues ha...

Behind the life cycle of a product, from the cradle to the grave, there is a story to tell. Not only about its potential impact on the environment, but as well in terms of social and socio-economic impacts - or potential impacts - of its production and consumption on the workers, the local communities, the consumers, the society and all value chai...

1 Abstract The feasibility study was prepared in a multi-stage discussion process within the context of the Task Force "Integration of social aspects into LCA" of the UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative. The methodology of environmental or biophysical LCA was taken and checked whether and how social aspects can be integrated or supplemented to conduct...

Companies benefit greatly from streamlined models and tools that can be used to mine for data and prioritize issues regarding the potential impacts of their operations and products. Guided by the well-established fields of Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Corporate Social Responsibility, Social LCA is a developing technique that allows...