Social-LCA providing new insights and learnings for social responsibility—case pulp and paper industry

Purpose: This paper presents the lessons learnt from testing the ORIENTING S-LCA methodology for a case product of Stora Enso, a globally operating forest industry company. The main purpose of the study was to explore what kind of additional insights and benefits the S-LCA method could provide compared to other existing social responsibility methods and approaches used by companies. Methods: The paper briefly describes the applied ORIENTING S-LCA method and its application in the case study, focusing on main learnings gained and development needs identified. The S-LCA methodology proposed in ORIENTING builds upon the UNEP Guidelines for S-LCA (UNEP 2020) and the Handbook for Product Social Impact Assessment (Goedkoop et al. 2020). S-LCA methodology relies on the reference scale approach (RSA) and combines qualitative and quantitative evaluations for assessing social performance and social risk along the product’s life cycle. Social performance assessment approach was applied for company’s own processes covering several life cycle stages and the risk assessment for assessing the supply chain. Results and discussion: Based on the case company’s experience, social assessments are currently conducted mainly on company or facility level. Moving towards product-based assessments could help gaining a more transparent view of products’ value chains and bring new possibilities for example to supplier specific sustainability audits. With the product-based S-LCA, the company could more easily identify, e.g., in which life cycle stage they would have most gaps on information and on which social matters, and take different stakeholders’ needs better into consideration in different life cycle stages. Areas that require further development concern especially data availability, assessment efficacy, and formulation of social topics. Conclusions: The study demonstrates that the S-LCA methodology offers several benefits when addressing social sustainability issues in the pulp and paper industry. Comprehensive view over different social topics, life cycle perspective, and stakeholder identification are key elements of S-LCA that may support identifying relevant sustainability topics for the purposes of corporate sustainability reporting. Additionally, they can support defining appropriate mitigation actions that will be required for complying with the requirements related to corporate sustainability due diligence.