Abstract Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCC) and Social Life Cycle Analysis (SLCA) are available methodologies for the economic and social assessment of a product or process along its life cycle. Different approaches regarding LCC and SLCA have recently emerged and several hypotheses are currently on testing and discussing. This paper shows existing LCC and a SLCA approaches as well as the methodology applied in the particular case of a paper recycling process. This study gathers part of the European project SORT IT whose main goal is to enable sustainable paper recovery throughout the development of new technology on sorting processes. Results of this paper show, for newsprint and packaging paper recycling processes, the goal and scope, life cycle description, system boundaries as well as functional unit defined for the LCC and SLCA models used in the project. In addition, costs and social indicators are defined under the project framework.