Calculating sustainability in supply chain capitalism

This paper examines the recent rise of life cycle assessment (LCA) as a supply chain governance tool. Many big brand retailers and manufacturers, as well as a number of governments, see LCA as a potentially valuable means to measure, communicate and thereby improve the ‘sustainability’ of material goods. The paper's arguments are threefold. First, the appeal of LCA's quantitative and seeming holistic methods must be understood in light of certain tensions and imperatives endemic to contemporary supply chain capitalism. Second, this appeal is tentative; it is far from clear that LCA can capture the complexity of products' ‘lives’ in measures that are simultaneously practical, legible and scientifically credible. Third, current public- and private-sector sustainability initiatives involving LCA offer opportunities to explore the increasingly important roles of scientific and technical expert communities in supply chain governance.