European Commission – Research General Directorate
Grant Agreement No: 212782
WP3
Report on
Life Cycle Assessments
Deliverable 3.4
Social Life Cycle Assessment - Methodology
March 2010
Table of contents
Summary
1 The Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA)
2 The goal of applying SLCA in W2Plastics
3 Scope of assessment
3.1 Defining the basis for comparison
3.2 Defining the impact categories to include in the assessment
3.2.1 Physical working environment
3.2.1.1 Description of impact category
3.2.1.2 Indicator description
3.2.1.3 Data sources
3.2.2 Local community acceptance
3.2.2.1 Description of impact category
3.2.2.2 Indicator description
3.2.2.3 Data sources
3.2.3 Job creation
3.2.3.1 Description of impact category
3.2.3.2 Indicator description
3.2.3.3 Data sources
3.3 Geographical and temporal scope
3.4 Boundaries
3.5 Allocation
4 Classification and characterisation
5 Uncertainty analysis
6 References
7 List of contributors
Summary
This report presents a Social Life Cycle Assessment methodology for assessing the social consequences of choosing to incorporate the magnetic density separator technology (MDS) in three different polyolefin (PO) recycling systems in comparison to existing technologies. The systems include PO from household and commercial packaging waste; building and construction waste and off-size post-consumer municipal waste; and automotive shredder residue. The assessment compares the handling of the amount of wastenecessary for the recycling of 1 tonne of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) through the MDS.
The MDS technology is presently not implemented in any of the mentioned systems, and the assessment methodology therefore has to be developed for assessing a potential future where the MDS is implemented in an EU country. This highly limits the types of social consequences which the assessment can include. On this basis, the social consequences considered in the assessment are limitedto be the physical working environment for the workers, the creation of jobs and the educational profile of these, and the local community assessment of each system. Indicators and data sources for assessing each of these types of social consequences are presented. Also the possibility of grouping the indicator results is discussed and it is concluded that because of high opacity of such approaches, no grouping (characterisation) is made. Finally, the handling of uncertainties is discussed.
The results obtained through following the presented methodology can be found in deliverable D 3.5.
1 The Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA)
As discussed in Jørgensen et al. (2008), SLCA is an emerging method which can include very diverse elements and is therefore not a well-defined method. However, some common elements can be identified (Jørgensen et al. 2009). First of all, it is an assessment method that focuses on social impacts. What is meant by ‘socialimpacts’ will be further discussed in section 3.2.
SLCA is furthermore an assessment method that focuses on the impacts that arise during the life cycle of a product, service or system (hereafter simply termed system). A life cycle of a system consists of all stages from the initial excavation of raw materials for the system over the manufacturing and use of the product to its final deposition.
Hereby the assessment allows for two different functionalities: By establishing an overview of the total social consequencesof a system, it allows for the identification of where the main social impacts are located in the life cycle. This may be used in a management situation, allowing the decision maker to act on the main impacts first. The second functionality is, through the assessment of two or more systems, to compare the total social impacts caused by two or more systems.
2 The goal of applying SLCA in W2Plastics
The purpose of this project is via an SLCA to compare different ways of treating polyolefin(PO) waste from various sources.The sources of PO waste assessed in this assessment comprise household and commercial packaging waste; building and construction waste and off-size post-consumer municipal waste; and automotive shredder residue.
The methods for treating the PO waste considered are either through the proposed ‘Magnetic Density Separator’ (MDS), whose development is the basis for the W2Plastics project (W2Plastics 2010).
3 Scope of assessment
3.1 Defining the basis for comparison
For a comparison to be meaningful we have to compare the same function. The function of the system is defined through a functional unit, which quantitatively expresses the function provided by the system. The functional unit in this assessment is set to be the treatment of the amount of waste which result in the separation of 1 tonne of PE and PP in total though the MDS.
When performing a product comparison of two or more systems able to provide the same functional unit, only the parts of the systems that are different have to be assessed, since the parts of the systems that are equal will not contribute to illustrating the differences among the alternatives.
3.2Defining the impact categories to include in the assessment
When making a comparison it is always ‘with regards to something’. This something is in SLCA defined through impact categories, which defines the social issues to consider in the assessment.
However, when defining the social impact categories to include in the assessment threeconditions need to be considered; what is social impacts, what social impacts can be assessed, and what stakeholders need to be considered in the assessment?
Thus, first of all, we need to have an, at least vague, idea of what we understand by ‘social’, since this is in essence what we want to assess impacts on. ‘Social’ should in this regard be understood as the social dimension of ‘social sustainability’, since this assessment together with an economic and environmental assessment, collectively should address the three dimensions of sustainability (W2Plastics 2008). This interpretation of ‘the social’ as being the social dimension of sustainability is relatively common in the SLCA community, where social sustainability has been nuanced in both Schmidt et al. (2004) and Nazarkina & Le Bocq (2006). Both publications refer to the work of Berger-Schmitt & Noll (2000) and conclude on this basis that social sustainability can be understood as the preservation or enhancement of three different types of ‘capital’, namely social, human and produced capital.
As a very short description, it can be stated that social capital relates to the resources tied in social networks, associations and institutions through common norms and trustful relationships. Human capital relates to the resources bound in people’s productive capacities, emphasising the importance of skills, education and health. And finally produced/physical capital relates to the resources in the stocks of machinery, factories, buildings and infrastructure (Schmidt et al. 2004).
We can therefore state that all aspects producing or destroying these three types of capital in any of the life cycle stages are of relevance for the assessment.
The other condition relates to what impact categories we can assess in the assessment. Why this is restricted will be explained below.
As mentioned above, the goal of the assessment is to make comparisons of various techniques for disposing of PO waste.
A very important characteristic for the W2Plastics project in relation to this methodology is that the assessment is not to be related to a specific location but rather to the EU as a whole.
In the SLCA community, it has by several authors been claimed that social impacts arise due to the conduct of stakeholders in the given life cycle stage, not as a function of the nature of the product, as assumed in environmental LCA (Spillemaeker et al. 2004, Dreyer et al. 2006). This claim has not been supported empirically, but is based on ‘common sense’ arguments. And to a large extent, the claim does seem reasonable. Consider, for example, the measurement of ‘discrimination towards employees’ which is a proposed impact category in almost all SLCA approaches (Jørgensen et al. 2008). In this case it seems ridiculous to assume that all companies producing a certain goods will have even close to the same level of discrimination towards the employees. Whether or not discrimination occurs can be seen as highly related to the conduct of the stakeholders in the life cycle stage, in this case, being the employer and employees in the company. But in other cases, it seems more reasonable to make the claim that it is in fact the nature of the product or service produced or performed by the stakeholders that in it self create the social impact. Consider for example different types of work related injuries, which is again an often included impact category in SLCA (Jørgensen et al. 2008). In this case, it seems reasonable to expect a higher number of cuts and bruises for a mechanic than for an office worker. The job function of a mechanic or an office worker will by other words presumably tend to be correlated to these types of impacts in certain ways, whereas it does not seem reasonable to expect a correlation between job function and e.g. ‘discrimination towards employees’. Furthermore, since job function is closely related to process, it therefore seems reasonable to make the connection between work related injuries and process. These differences among social impact categories included in SLCA approaches as to what extent their incidence and severity may be defined by the nature of the product or by the conduct of the company has not yet been discussed or studied in the SLCA community. However, in this case, the distinction is important, since this assessment should assess a system somewhere in the EU, i.e. there are no specific ‘conduct of stakeholders’. In this assessment we can therefore only include types of social impacts which can reasonably be related to the nature of the product in it self. But, as no such empirical studies have yet been performed addressing this distinction, it will have to be made on the basis of arguments of common sense.
A very important implication of this is that this assessment will not be able to give the full picture of all the social impacts which may arise due to the three alternatives. This implies that the assessment should only be used in the situation where a choice has to be made before an actual implementation. In this situation as in any other little relevant information will always be better than no information at all. After implementation, other possibilities for assessing social impacts will be possible, which may significantly change the results of this assessment.
A final condition for choosing the impact categories relate to the nature of the comparison. In the SLCA community four different types of stakeholders have been identified which may be affected by a system, being; the workers throughout the life cycle, the user of the product, service or system being assessed and the local and the regional/global community surrounding the worker and the user (Grießhammer et al. 2006). This assessment deals with the handling of waste after collection which means that there are no relevant ‘product users’ to consider.
The actual selection of impact categories to include in the assessment will take its point of departure in impact categories proposed by the various scholars in the SLCA community, taking into consideration that the chosen impact categories should both be relevant in relation to the human, social or produced capital and be possible to assess, implying that they should be reasonably related to the nature of the product, and not relate to the user.
Below an overview of impact categories in SLCA is presented (as presented in Jørgensen et al. 2008. See this article for references):
Impact categories / Number of indicators, quantitative/descriptive (q/d):Barthel et al. / Cañeque / Dreyer et al.1 / Flysjö2 / Gauthier / Hunkeler / Manhart & Grieβhammer / Méthot3 / Nazarkina & Le Bocq4 / Schmidt et al. / Spillemaeckers5 / Included in approaches
Human rights
Non-discrimination, including indicators on diversity, such as composition of employees on all levels according to gender, age group, disabled, part-time workers and other measures of diversity / 2,q / 10,q / 1,q / 3,q / 1,d / 1,d / ?,q / 4,q / 5,q / 2,q / 10
Freedom of association and collective bargaining / 2,q / 1,q / 1,d / 1,d / ?,q / 1,q / 1,q / 8,q / 8
Child labour, including hazardous child labour / 2,q / 1,q / 1,d / 1,d / 1,q / 1,q / 3,q / 7
Forced and compulsory labour / 1,q / 1,q / 1,d / 1,d / 1,q / 1,q / 3,q / 7
Labour practices and decent work conditions
Wages, including equal remuneration on diverse groups, regular payment, length and seasonality of work and minimum wages / 1,q / 3,q / 6,q
1,d / 2,d / ?,q / 4,q / 1,q / 5,q / 8
Benefits, including family support for basic commodities and workforce facilities / 1,d / 1,q / 1,d / 6,q / 4,q / 5
Physical working conditions, including rates of injury and fatalities, nuisances, basal facilities and distance to workplace / 2,q / 2,q / 1,q / 2,q
3,d / 1,d / 1,d / ?,q / 4,q / 6,q / 9,q / 10
Psychological and organisational working conditions, such as maximum work hours, harassments, vertical two-ways communication channels, health and safety committee, job satisfaction, and worker contracts / 1,d / 1,d / 2,d / 10,q / 1,q / 8,q / 6
Training and education of employees / 2,q / 2,d / 1,d / 1,d / ?,q / 6,q / 1,q / 2,q / 8
Society
Corruption, including incidents/press reports concerning fraud, corruption and illegal price-fixing, and violation of property rights. / 1,d / 2,d / 2,q / 1,q / 4
Development support and positive actions towards society, including job creation, support of local suppliers, general support of developing countries, investments in research and development, infrastructure, and local community education programs / 6,q / 1,q / 12,d / ?,q / 12,q / 8,q / 5,q / 7
Local community acceptance, such as complaints from society, and presence of communication channels / 1,d / ?,q / 4,q / 1,q / 5,q / 5
Ensuring of commitment to sustainability issues from and towards business partners / 2,d / 6,q / 2
Product responsibility
Integration of costumer health and safety concerns in product, such as content of contaminants/nutrients, other threats/benefits to human health (including special groups) due to product use, and complaint handling system / 2,q / 1,d / 5,d / 1,q / 4
Information about product to users, such as labelling, information about ingredients, origin, use, potential dangers, and side effects. / 1,q
2,d / 2,q / 2
Marketing communications, such as ethical guidelines for advertisements / 1,d / 1
Table 1: overview of impact categories in SLCA (Jørgensen et al. 2008)
From an overall perspective, it can be seen that there are three main stakeholders in existing SLCA approaches, namely the workers working within the system, the society around the system, and the users. As described above only the two former are relevant. Considering now which of the impact categories related to the workers that may be reasonably related to the nature of the product, none of the impact categories related to ‘human rights’ seem to apply, since they seem to be very much related to the how the specific companies are managed. The same seem to be the case in relation to the level of wages paid by the company to the workers, the level of benefits to the workers, and to what extent the workers are offered any education and training. However, the working conditions may be, at least to some extent, related to the nature of the product or service produced or performed by the workers, as already pointed out above. We will, however, claim that the psychological working condition will be more company specific and less product specific than the physical working conditions, implying the psychological working conditions to be less appropriate impact category to use in this assessment. Considering the last criterion, which was whether the impact category was relevant in relation to any of the human, social or produced capital, it seems evident that the physical working conditions will influence health, which is an aspect of human capital. The physical working environment therefore seems to be a satisfactory impact category to address in this study as the only of the above impact categories relating to the worker.
With regards to impact categories relating to the surrounding society, what seems possible to assess relates to the creation of jobs (considered under the ‘development support and positive actions towards the society’), since the required manpower needed for each compared system seems relatively relatable to the processes included. The impact category is relevant for social sustainability in that the creation of jobs will have a large impact of the workers in terms of health, as being unemployment has proven to often have very negative health impacts on the worker (and his/her family) (Jørgensen et al. 2010) and thereby impact human capital. At the same time it also seems reasonably to expect that a favouring of one education profile at the cost of another could impact the coherency of society, and thereby be of relevance in relation to the preservation or enhancement of the social capital in society. Yet, our present understanding of social capital is limited, and a further confirmation of this claim therefore cannot be made.
Also, in relation to the ‘development support and positive actions towards the society’ impact category, it seems possible to state something about the general local community acceptance towards the various systems, as studies point to some common nuisances connected to the various types of facilities included in the compared systems.Impacts on the local community may be relevant for social sustainability for several reasons. First of all, the impacts mentioned above may, through toxic emissions but also through noise and even anxiety related to fears of emissions, etc., relate to the physical and psychological health of the local community which is part of the human capital as mentioned in section 3.2above. Furthermore, impacts will also affect the produced capital, as the facilities may impact the utility value of the surrounding properties, as will be discussed below.These nuisances or health impacts can be of both physical and psychological character affecting the human capital and thereby be of relevance to social sustainability. Thus, in relation to the local community two impact categories will be addressed, namely the creation of jobs and local community acceptance.
Altogether this assessment will thus be based on three impact categories, being the ‘physical working environment’ for the workers, the ‘creation of jobs’ and ‘local community acceptance’. Again, it must be emphasised that the assumption that these impact categories are more process-related than the other impact categories above is based on the author’s judgement. Below, each of these impact categories will be further discussed and indicators will be presented.
3.2.1Physical working environment
3.2.1.1Description of impact category
The physical working environment relates to the workers throughout the life cycle of the assessed systems, and does thereby not address users of the systems or stakeholders in the society surrounding the systems. The physical working environment impact category addresses acute or chronic physical health impacts occurring during work hours on the worker.
3.2.1.2Indicator description
Health impacts arising from the physical working environment may be assessed in many ways. In the SLCA community, these health impacts have been assessed bothon the basis of reports on incidences of lethal and non-lethal accidents (Barthel et al. 2005), and on the basis of a more management oriented approaches looking at the presence of various policies, committees and training activities directed towards ensuring a safe working environment (Spillemaeckers et al. 2004), presumably based on the assumption that the more developed the management system, the less work related health impacts arise. None of these approaches are problem-free. As Dreyer et al. (2006) writes a low number of reported health impacts may both cover a good physical working environment but also a poor reporting system. On the other hand the management system alone may be an uncertain measure of the actual occurring health impacts since a management system may be highly developed without having significant impacts on the working environment and vice versa. In this case the former way of assessing health impacts was chosen, mainly because data on incidences of work related health impacts are more accessible, and because it allows for an easier quantification than the assessment of the management system.