The Third Wave of LCA as the “Decade of Consolidation”

Several authors have pointed out the importance of systems thinking, and have considered both environmental and social aspects (holistic perspective) of sustainability assessment in the past. Sustainability assessment tools which integrate different aspects (e.g., environmental/social aspects) in order to identify negative impacts have already been developed. Common tools used to assess environmental, social, or economic impacts include the life cycle assessment (LCA), social life cycle assessment (S-LCA), life cycle costing (LCC) and life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) approaches. The goal of the present study was to investigate how and to what extent the three dimensions of sustainability (environmental, social, economic; holistic sustainability perspective) have been integrated into the field of LCA. A topic modeling method was applied to examine whether the emphasis placed on integrating environmental, social, and economic aspects in sustainability assessment has resulted in a more comprehensive application of the LCA approach. The results show that topics related to energy and infrastructure are currently prevailing, and that topics related to methods have been decreasing since 1997. A minor discussion of social aspects and a lack of discussion on economic aspects were identified in the present study. These results do not support the predicted “decade of life cycle sustainability assessment.” Consequently, a new period of LCA extension and application is predicted, namely, the third wave of LCA as the “decade of consolidation.” During this period, the LCA framework will be enhanced to reduce existing practical and methodological difficulties and integrate environmental and social aspects in a sustainability assessment to support global sustainable development.