Environmental and socio-economic life cycle assessment

1
Environmental and socio-economic life cycle
assessment

• The Case Study of a Glass Bangle Factory in
  Firozabad (India)
• Bastien Roquier
• broquier_at_cooperation.net
• Ecointesys Life Cycle Systems
• Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne
  (EPFL)

2
Overview

• Introduction
• Social / socio-economic impact
• Methodology
• Case study
• Synthesis
• Conclusion and perspectives

3
Introduction

• Which data and indicators can define
  social/socio-economic impact on the workers?
• How to combine environmental, social and economic
  aspects in a consistent way?

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Social / socio-economic impact

• Social Impact
• Social impacts include all social and cultural
  consequences to human populations that alter the
  ways in which people live, work, play, relate to
  one another, organize to meet their needs and
  generally cope as members of a society.
• Burdge and Vanclay (1996)
• Most of these social aspects are
• Difficult to quantify in a life cycle perspective
• Not (directly) linked to product or processes

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Social / socio-economic impact

• A more suitable way to analyse impact on the
  workers
• The socio-economic impact which focuses on
  employment, income, gender, age, ...
• With...
• Impacts (on the workers) directly related to the
  life cycle of the product
• Higher data availability (at local and national
  levels)
• Data compatible with LCA-methodologies

6
Social / socio-economic impact

• Links between processes and workers.

Process
Environmental changes
Social changeprocesses
Economic changes
Environmental impacts
Social socio-economic impacts
7
Social / socio-economic impact

• Socio-economic framework
• International Conventions
• International Labor Organization (ILO)
  conventions
• Millennium Development Goals (UNDP)
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the
  United Nations
• Convention on the Rights of the Child
• Global Reporting Initiatives sustainability
  reporting guidelines and SA8000
• Indicators
• UNCSD
• EPSILON (European Sustainability Indicators)
• MDG, OECD and GRI Indicators

8
Social / socio-economic impact

• Selection of indicator categories (example)
• Employment (job creation and job loss)
• Equity
• Poverty
• Knowledge
• Interpersonal relationship
• Health
• Child labour

9
Social / socio-economic impact

• Levels of data acquisition

10
Methodology

• Hybrid Process Input-Output economic LCA

Input-output analysis
Process analysis
Data from Interviews, local census, ...
Data from National census, economic transaction
table
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Methodology
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Case Study of Firozabad

• Firozabad
• Indian capital of the glass manufacture
• Located 40 km from Agra
• In the area of protection of Taj Mahal (TTZ)
• Leading producer of traditional glass bangles

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Case Study of Firozabad
14
Case Study of Firozabad
15
Case Study of Firozabad
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Case Study of Firozabad
7200 kgeq CO2
105500 MJ
58000 Rs
380 mandays
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Case Study of Firozabad
n.a.
n.a.
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Case Study of Firozabad
n.a.
n.a.
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Synthesis

• The pros ...
• Use of conventional process and IO-LCA methods
• Hybrid method allows us to use equal and
  consistent system boundaries for environment and
  social LCA
• ... and cons
• High dependence on data availability
• Not really adapted to forecast social
  changes/impacts
• Many gaps remain in the framework of a real
  social impact assessment

20
Conclusion and outlook

• At this stage,
• SLCA is not a real SIA (social impact
  assessment), but it provides relevant information
  to conduct a SIA from a holistic perspective.
• There is a need
• To involve sociologist in method development
• To select more consistent and relevant indicators
• To enlarge the scope of evaluation for all social
  aspect and the whole population

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• Thank you!