From LCA to Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment: concept, practice and future directions

More than 1 year ago, the subject area on Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment has been launched (Zamagni 2012) in order to provide a virtual place in which scientists from different disciplinary fields could discuss the main challenges in addressing sustainability with a life cycle perspective. The challenge has been taken on also by the editors of three subject areas that deal with sustainability from complementary angles—Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA), Life Cycle Costing (LCC), and Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA). The result was the launch of a call for papers for a special issue on LCSA, whose results we are glad to present. Our initiative took its point of departure from two facts: (1) sustainability has become quite a keyword in any decisioncontext situation and the scientific community has the duty to provide its contribution in demonstrating what might be sustainable and how to measure it with a scientific approach; (2) the life cycle approach is considered to provide a valuable support in integrating sustainability into the design, innovation, and evaluation of products and services, as can be seen in several environmental policies at the European and international level in which life cycle thinking represents the backbone. As far as the timely and challenging aspects of sustainability are concerned, the EU has mainstreamed sustainable development into a broad range of its policies, such as the initiatives against climate change and the promotion of a low-carbon economy. The European Council (2009) confirmed that sustainable development remains a fundamental objective of the European Union under the Lisbon Treaty. Moreover, as emphasized in the Presidency’s report on the review of the Union’s Sustainable Development Strategy, the strategy will continue to provide a long-term vision and constitute the overarching policy framework for all Union policies and strategies (Council of the European Union 2009). Sustainability is a concept that needs to be addressed not only at the policy level but also in the business context: many companies have included sustainability in their mission, also driven by an increasing demand for sustainable products by more aware consumers. Although the policy and the business context deal with sustainability in different ways, given the diversity of needs, a common element for both is the complexity entailed by the assessment. Such a complexity is due to the followingmain aspects, as pointed out byHeijungs et al. (2010)