Life cycle sustainability assessment pillars

THREE PILLARS OF SUSTAINABILITY AND THE NEED FOR LIFE CYCLE SUSTAINABILITY ASSESSMENT... 

Since life cycle assessment (LCA) can be more than an environmental impact assessment approach, chapter Life Cycle Sustainabiftty Assessment A Holistic Evaluation of Social, Economic, and Environmental Impacts discusses life cycle sustainabiftty assessment. This extends the holistic environmental LCA to account for the economic and social pillars of sustainabiftty. Lastly, chapter Embedding Sustainabiftty in Product and Process Development—The Role of Process Systems Engineers describes the practical role of process systems engineers in the implementation of sustainabiftty in product and process development. It shows some key aspects and tools that practitioners should take into account to design and develop more sustainable products and processes during material selection, process design, process and product modeling, and supply chain implications. 

In summary, LCSA is a hohstic approach to assess the life cycle sustainability of a product/service, which is inclusive for three pillars of sustainability. It overcomes the difficulty in quantifying social indicators to provide relatively indicative quantitative results. 

Being different from other approaches to assess fife cycle sustainability, PROSUITE methodology utiHzes five endpoint impacts, which reduce the risk of overlapping between three pillars of SustainabiHty. For example, the indicator of income, which can be used as a pathway to social SustainabiHty, brings better quality of life. At the same time, income indicator can be considered under the economic sustainabihty point of view [14],... 

---