It’s 7 A.M. EST in New York, and we are geared up to meet with one of our supplier clients on the other side of the world over Zoom. 

This is our second meeting with the supplier. We are doing a working session to culturally adapt our data ask so that it is easy, clear and practical for them to provide us the necessary inputs.

This is one of the main things we do at ABLE. We want to create a frictionless experience for our clients to help us measure their social or environmental footprint. 

On this particular day, we are working on Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) for our client.

What is Social LCA? 

Social Life Cycle Assessment helps us measure positive and negative social impacts associated with a product system across its life cycle. While companies have become increasingly familiar with measuring the carbon, water, energy, and other environmental impacts associated with a product's life cycle, understanding the social impacts embedded in that same life cycle is still relatively new. But that is beginning to change. 

Evolving requirements around sustainability due diligence and reporting are bringing greater attention to social impacts across global value chains. The EU's Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) establishes requirements around identifying, preventing, mitigating, and addressing adverse human-rights and environmental impacts in companies' chains of activities. The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) also bring greater focus to reporting on social sustainability matters.

But regulations are just one part of it. There is a high risk of exploitation oversight in a highly fragmented global supply chain which is evident in some of the most recent legal cases involving labor rights violations and corporate accountability.

This is where S-LCA comes in.

S-LCA is connected to a wide range of international frameworks and social sustainability tools, including the ILO Decent Work Agenda, UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, ISO guidelines, social audits, standards and certifications.

S-LCA brings these different sources together within a systemic, life-cycle perspective, helping organizations assess social impacts across its value chain and inform decisions, reporting, audits, and other interventions which then informs materiality assessments, reporting, social audits, certifications, product and process decisions, and recommendations.

A Localised Human Centered Approach

The assessment usually begins with identifying social hotspots based on where the supply chain is located and what social issues may be particularly relevant in that context. A social hotspot assessment combined with what is material to the organisation, what vulnerabilities may exist in that particular location, and what characteristics of the production process could contribute to potential social impacts, helps identify what stakeholder groups and impact categories are most relevant before the proceeding to chart and build the S-LCA Inventory requirement. 

After an extensive initial research and thorough assessment we are currently now in our second stage of Social LCA for this client, which is data collection and this is why we are meeting our supplier.

Designing the Ask

Data is core to what we do at ABLE but we just don’t ask them, we design our ask to suit our suppliers.

The methodologies for an LCA or SLCA or a Living Wage program is established and data exists with our suppliers and brands. But what is different are our clients with diverse global suppliers, each with their own organizational structure, raw materials, technology access, language, culture and way of doing things. 

Today, we are meeting with our client’s supplier in China to review the questionnaire for a farm supplier we have not yet met, but who is directly connected to our current supplier. Before we approach our farm supplier, we want to make sure that our questions are clear, practical and respectful of their time and context

On this particular morning my desktop Zoom screen is filled with four familiar faces: our Head of Product, who takes feedback from every supplier conversation back to our platform; our CEO and Strategy Head, who oversees our human-centered approach and helps us think through how the process should work from the supplier's perspective; me, the head of social impact who is leading the social LCA and our supplier from China.

The conversation quickly moves beyond the questionnaire itself. We talk through how the questions would land with the farm supplier, what information they are likely to have readily available and what might make the data-collection process easier for them.

At ABLE we specialize in farm data collection which is one of the toughest to reach. What we have understood is every location and supplier has a different comfort level with technology. Even if it is as simple as a phone call. After a very productive session we thank our supplier and our team does a quick huddle on the farm data collection. We are weighing our options. We can either ask our representative in China to go to the farm and collect the data we need, or, even better, our CEO and Strategy Head goes along with our China representative so that we can document the process for future reference.

What ABLE does differently

At ABLE we establish a living contact with the suppliers in the supply chain. That means we talk to  suppliers and explain why we are asking for the information. We adapt our questions to their context. We work with them to understand what data exists, what evidence is available, what may be difficult to provide and how we can help to fill these gaps.

Like this 7 A.M meeting with our supplier across the globe, whom we were meeting to prep for our in-person interview with our farmer to collect data and evidence while also ensuring our farm supplier feels comfortable, respected and heard.