Towards a Blockchain-Enabled Social-Life Cycle Assessment Service for Increased Value Chain Sustainability

As sustainability requirements are growing, more and more companies are falsely claiming to supply sustainable products, thus creating an unfair playing field for companies that do comply. The Textile and Clothing (TC) industry is one of the least sustainable and transparent industries, often manufacturing products in low-cost countries with inadequate working conditions and environmental standards. The purpose of this study is to investigate how social sustainability assessments can be conducted, to increase the reliability of sustainability claims. The paper proposes a concept of a Social-Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) service that is based on site-specific primary data and is grounded in the international Social Accountability (SA) 8000 certification system, to increase the reliability of sustainability claims. United Nations recommends the SA8000 in their S-LCA guidelines. The S-LCA service is also enabled by Blockchain to secure that critical data remains unaltered. The concept and service are being developed through the Design Science methodology, combining: i) case studies in an EU project, to understand the practical problem, ii) a S-LCA literature study, and iii) action research, to iteratively apply the service to the cases and refine it with project contributors representing the entire TC value chain. The concept consists of a workflow diagram, preliminary user interface, data collection template, and an overview of critical data to be secured by Blockchain. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first research paper about a concept of a site-specific S-LCA service that is integrated with an international certification system and a Blockchain-enabled platform.