Towards Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment

Matthias Finkbeiner, Erwin M. Schau, Annekatrin Lehmann and Marzia Traverso
Additional contact information
Matthias Finkbeiner: Department of Environmental Technology, Technische Universität Berlin, Office Z1, Strasse des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin, Germany
Erwin M. Schau: Department of Environmental Technology, Technische Universität Berlin, Office Z1, Strasse des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin, Germany
Annekatrin Lehmann: Department of Environmental Technology, Technische Universität Berlin, Office Z1, Strasse des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin, Germany
Marzia Traverso: Department of Environmental Technology, Technische Universität Berlin, Office Z1, Strasse des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin, Germany

Sustainability, 2010, vol. 2, issue 10, 1-14

Abstract: Sustainability is nowadays accepted by all stakeholders as a guiding principle for both public policy making and corporate strategies. However, the biggest challenge for most organizations remains in the real and substantial implementation of the sustainability concept. The core of the implementation challenge is the question, how sustainability performance can be measured, especially for products and processes. This paper explores the current status of Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) for products and processes. For the environmental dimension well established tools like Life Cycle Assessment are available. For the economic and social dimension, there is still need for consistent and robust indicators and methods. In addition to measuring the individual sustainability dimensions, another challenge is a comprehensive, yet understandable presentation of the results. The “Life Cycle Sustainability Dashboard” and the “Life Cycle Sustainability Triangle” are presented as examples for communication tools for both experts and non expert stakeholders.

Keywords: life cycle sustainability assessment; life cycle assessment; life cycle costing; social LCA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (154)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/2/10/3309/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/2/10/3309/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:2:y:2010:i:10:p:3309-3322:d:9966

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().