Guidelines for social life cycle assessment of products : Lignes directrices pour l'analyse sociale du cycle de vie des produits

Disclaimer The designations employed and the presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the United Nations Environment Programme concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. [...] The S-LCA Guidelines provide the necessary basis for the development of databases and the design of softwares that will ease the practice of S-LCA. [...] All stages in the life cycle of the product are considered in an LCA, from the mining and extraction of its raw materials, to the shipping, right on to the landfill. [...] In parallel, the analysts will inform Shirtz on which phases of the life cycle of the product might have the greatest share of worker hours and furthermore, for which phases of the life cycle the social impacts may be the most important, using secondary data. [...] The impacts of the gathering and shipment of raw cotton to a textile company, of refining that cotton into a fabric that can be sewn into shirts, the dyeing of the fabric, the stitching, the printing and addition of those uncomfortable tags that go on the necks of the shirts that say “Shirtz” in little red letters—each part is factored in.