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Society and stakeholders increasingly evaluate products and corporations against their environmental and social performance. Especially sustainability claims of premium products which’s USP comprises quality as well as sustainability underlie public scrutiny and this trend may even exacerbate in the future. This does not only apply for a corporation’s direct impacts, but for the impacts of their supply chain as well (Pesonen, 2001).

Nevertheless, no objective definition of sustainability exists (Somogyi, 2016) and production as well as consumption always causes impacts. Concurrently, reducing one impact can come at the cost of increasing another. As a consequence, the translation from theoretical sustainability to sustainability measures is always influenced by societal valuations. The degree of subjectivity further increases, when companies, researchers or administrative bodies apply certain methods and according criteria to measure the impacts of products. Approaches range from political indicators to monitor forest development to scientific approaches with very specific focusses and may comprise quantitative, qualitative or both elements. They can be categorized as voluntary and obligatory approaches and can vary in their focus as well as in their results.

Based on the recognition that environmental sustainability can only be implemented in conformity with social and economic aspects (see inter alia World Commission on Environment and Development 1987), methods and tools to analyse them are brought into focus, as well. Different approaches and standardised methods exist in the field of economic analysis, e.g. market analysis and potential assessment or innovation- and technology foresight. The research field of social analysis however is characterized by inhomogenic methodological approaches and a variety of different taken perspectives. Hence, an integrated analysis of the different dimensions of sustainability is indispensable for a valid assessment.

World Comission on Environment and Development (1987): Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future. http://www.un-documents.net/our-common-future.pdf

Pesonen, H-L. “Environmental Management  of Value Chains. Promoting Life-Cycle Thinking in Industrial Networks,” 2001. http://www.greenleaf-publishing.com/content/pdfs/gmi33peso.pdf.

Somogyi, Z. “A Framework for Quantifying Environmental Sustainability.” Ecological Indicators 61, 2 (February 2016): 338–45. doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2015.09.034.