Source: Goedkoop, M.J.; de Beer, I.M; Harmens, R.; Peter Saling; Dave Morris; Alexandra Florea; Anne Laure Hettinger; Diana Indrane; Diana Visser; Ana Morao; Elizabeth Musoke-Flores; Carmen Alvarado; Ipshita Rawat; Urs Schenker; Megann Head; Massimo Collotta; Thomas Andro; Jean-François Viot; Alain Whatelet; Product Social Impact Assessment Handbook - 2020, Amersfoort, November 1st, 2020
Product Social Impact Assessment Handbook
The Handbook for Product Social Impact Assessment (PSIA) – (“the Handbook”) describes a consensus-based methodology to assess positive and negative social impacts of products and services on four stakeholder groups: workers, local communities, small-scale entrepreneurs and users. Uniquely, the methodology focuses on assessing social impacts of products and services rather than on the impact of a company as a whole. The background of the methodology is described in detail in the Methodology Report.
The Handbook is primarily written for people in the company with environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) expertise, who now want to start assessing the social aspects of the company’s products and want to do the first case study. In addition, the Handbook means to inspire all people and departments to improve responsible decision making and communication of results.
There are some fundamental differences between social and environmental life-cycle approaches. For example, to date, there are no sufficiently detailed secondary databases that can be used to create a complete inventory for social LCA studies.