In 2015, all United Nation member states adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with the 17 Sustainable Development goals (SDGs) at its heart (United Nations, 2019). The SDGs provide 17 goals, 169 targets and more than 200 indicators to guide governments toward sustainable development in 2030. The aim is to provide a roadmap and blueprint for a better and more sustainable future for all.
Although the goals are mostly defined on government and policy level, the SDGs are relevant for businesses as well. Achieving the SDGs can, for example, create business value and jobs (Business & Sustainable Development Commission, 2017). In addition, contributing to the SDGs creates opportunities to better manage risks, anticipate customer demand, secure access to resources and strengthen supply chains (World Business Council for Sustainable Development, 2017). Considering this, it is no surprise that a growing number of companies have communicated that they will align their strategy with the SDGs and have committed to support all or some of the 17 SDGs.
Often, commitment to SDGs is communicated on a company-wide level. Reaching the SDG targets, however, depends on the products and services that a company offers. Commitment to SDGs therefore also implies a change in product development and reporting: companies are expected to be able to use metrics that show if (and if so, how) existing or new products contribute to supporting the SDGs. While it is already possible to use life cycle assessment (LCA) to assess environmental and social impact at the product level, using LCA-based metrics for the SDGs is a new challenge.
An important aspect of this challenge is that the SDGs were developed for global and country-level policies, while LCA was developed for assessment on the level of individual products (Kühnen et al. 2019). Furthermore, the SDG targets and indicators, as defined by the UN, are often qualitative rather than quantitative. Finally, SDGs may overlap, interact or conflict with each other: SDG 1 (No poverty) and SDG 8 (Decent work and economic growth) overlap, while SDG 13 (Climate action) and SDG 7 (Affordable and clean energy) seem to be in conflict (Scherer et al, 2018).
