From behind the curtain: talking about values in LCA

Abstract

Practitioners of life cycle assessment (LCA) acknowledge that more input from social scientists can help advance the cause of life cycle management (LCM). This commentary offers a social science perspective on a long-running question within LCA, namely, how the field should manage not only stakeholders’ values but also those of practitioners themselves. More than 60 interviews were conducted with LCA practitioners and their industry clients. Qualitative data were also collected through participant observation at several LCA and LCM conferences, a study of the field’s history, and extensive content and discourse analysis of LCA publications and online forums. Results show that LCA practitioners’ values are informed partly by the knowledge acquired through their LCA work. At the same time, LCA standards and professional norms implicitly advise practitioners to keep those values out of their work as much as possible, so as not to compromise its apparent objectivity. By contrast, many social scientists contend openly that value-based judgments, based on “situated knowledge,” can actually enhance the rigor, accountability, and credibility of scientific assessments. LCA practitioners’ own situated knowledge justifies not only the value choices required by LCA but also their evaluative judgments of contemporary life cycle-based sustainability initiatives. This more critical voice could advance the goals of LCM while also boosting the credibility of LCA more generally.