REVIEW ‘Socializing’ sustainability: a critical review on current development status of social life cycle impact assessment method Gyan Kumar Chhipi-Shrestha • Kasun Hewage • Rehan Sadiq Received: 3 June 2014 / Accepted: 18 August 2014 Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014 Abstract Social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) is a technique to assess the potential social impacts of a product or service caused by its life cycle. The aim of this paper is to critically review the methodologies applied in S-LCIA and establish its current development status by highlighting areas for improvement. The UNEP/SETAC Guidelines published in 2009 provided general procedures for con- ducting S-LCA, but lack S-LCIA methods. Many new S-LCIA methods have been proposed but these are inher- ently different, indicating a scientific and well-accepted S-LCIA method is yet to be developed. Broadly, two types of S-LCIA methods, i.e. performance reference point and impact pathways methods are in use. A direction for future research could be the refinement of the social hotspots database and the social hotspot index calculation method. Moreover, the S-LCIA method could be developed by combining the performance reference point and impact pathways methods. Keywords Social life cycle assessment  Life cycle sustainability assessment  Social impact assessment  Social hotspots Introduction Sustainable development and sustainability are ideas that have been widely used since the 1980s in response to the negative impacts of development, policies, and strategies on the environment and society (UNEP/SETAC 2011; Turcu 2013; Fiksel et al. 2014). Sustainability has three main pillars, namely environment, economic and social (Valdivia et al. 2011), which are referred to as the triple- bottom-line (TBL) (Sikdar 2007; Vinodh et al. 2012). Integrating life cycle thinking in product or process development with the TBL approach challenges the con- ventional waste management and pollution prevention mindset that mainly focuses on the factory site (UNEP/ SETAC 2011). This new perspective avoids shifting the problem from one phase to another and from one geogra- phy to another (UNEP/SETAC 2009). This integrated approach is referred to as life cycle sustainability assess- ment (LCSA) (UNEP/SETAC 2011). LCSA is ‘‘the eval- uation of all environmental, social, and economic negative impacts and benefits in decision-making processes towards more sustainable products throughout their life cycle’’ (UNEP/SETAC 2011). It has three components: environ- mental life cycle assessment (E-LCA), economic life cycle assessment (i.e. life cycle costing, LCC), and social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) (Klopffer 2003; UNEP/SETAC 2011). Among these three aspects of LCSA, S-LCA is newer and is the least developed (Klopffer 2003; Jørgensen et al. 2008; Macombe et al. 2013). S-LCA gives an addi- tional value to sustainability assessment by measuring its social dimension (UNEP/SETAC 2009). A social and socio-economic life cycle assessment, or simply social LCA, is a technique that assesses the potential social impacts of a product or service caused by its life cycle. The life cycle includes the phases from material extraction and manufacturing to end-of-life pha- ses. The social impacts are mainly on human capital, human well-being, cultural heritage, socio-economy and social behaviour (Weidema 2006; UNEP/SETAC 2009). Social LCA refers to the assessment of the real and G. K. Chhipi-Shrestha  K. Hewage  R. Sadiq (&) School of Engineering, University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus, 3333 University Way, Kelowna, BC V1V 1V7, Canada e-mail: rehan.sadiq@ubc.ca 123 Clean Techn Environ Policy DOI 10.1007/s10098-014-0841-5