Sustainable Production and Consumption: A Decision-Support Framework Integrating Environmental, Economic and Social Sustainability

The idea of sustainable production and consumption is becoming a widely-accepted societal goal worldwide. However, its implementation is slow and the world continues to speed down an unsustainable path. One of the difficulties is the sheer complexity of production systems that would need to be re-engineered in a more sustainable way as well as the number of sustainability constraints that have to be considered and satisfied simultaneously. This paper argues that bringing about sustainable production and consumption requires a systems approach underpinned by life cycle thinking as well as an integration of economic, environmental and social aspects. In an attempt to aid this process, a decision-support framework has been developed comprising a range of tools, including scenario analysis, life cycle assessment, life cycle costing, social sustainability assessment, system optimisation and multi-attribute analysis. An application of the framework is illustrated on a case study related to energy.