Social responsibility is always consequential — Rebuttal to Brander, Burritt and Christ (2019): Coupling attributional and consequential life cycle assessment: A matter of social responsibility

In our paper titled ‘Attributional or consequential life cycle assessment: a matter of social responsibility’ (Weidema et al., 2018), we conclude that “a consistent socially responsible decision-maker must always take responsibility for the activities in the consequential product life cycle and may additionally take responsibility for consequences of other activities in the value chain or supply chain.” Brander et al. (2019) summarise this as: “consequential LCA is essential, while attributional LCA is optional”, and present a critique of this conclusion, suggesting instead a sequential coupling of the two LCA models. In this rebuttal we point out that the arguments in Brander et al. (2019) do not directly challenge or discuss our central conclusion, and we here present further arguments in support of our conclusion.