We are pleased to invite you to the 29^th Discussion Forum (DF) on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) addressing the topic of quantifying social impacts in a life cycle perspective.

Companies are getting used to report on social issues in their annual (sustainability) reports. It is mainly focused on the activities of the companies and does not apply a life cycle perspective. The LCA method has been developed to measure the environmental performance of a product, a service, a company, etc... As a complementary approach, Life Cycle Costing (LCC) has been added to take into account the economic aspects of products and services. In order to be exhaustive in assessing the three pillars of sustainability, the two methods mentioned should be complemented by a kind of “Social LCA” to consider the social effects of products and services. However, the first question is: “Is this really feasible?” and then, if yes, how current information practice can be used?

The presentations and discussions of the 29^th Discussion Forum shall help to find answers to this overall question. In detail, the following questions will be addressed during this day:

• Which social issues are reported in a quantified way in sustainability reports?
• Can we profit from sustainability reporting of companies?
• Are we able to quantify social impacts in a life cycle perspective?
• if yes, which social indicators would be feasible and meaningful in a life cycle perspective?
• if no, is it due to a lack of data or a lack of homogenous information?
• How can we define an indicator to measure welfare?

In particular, the forum will look at the quantification of social effects, the characterization and modelling of social effects, the already available life cycle approaches to include social effects, the monetarization of social externalities and on case studies on evaluating the social effects with a life cycle perspective.

The forum will be held in Lausanne, at the Ecole Polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne. The floor is open for short presentation (10 minutes). If you are interested, please submit an abstract before the 15th of May.

The forum will be held in English.

We hope that this forum will be of interest for you and we look forward to welcoming you in Lausanne.

Yves Loerincik, Ecointesys – Life Cycle Systems

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