Environmental and socioeconomic life cycle assessment The Case

Environmental and socio-economic life cycle assessment The Case Study of a Glass Bangle Factory in Firozabad (India) Bastien Roquier broquier@cooperation. net Ecointesys – Life Cycle Systems Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) 9/25/2020 1

Overview ● Introduction ● Social / socio-economic impact ● Methodology ● Case study ● Synthesis ● Conclusion and perspectives 9/25/2020 2

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? 9/25/2020 3

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 9/25/2020 4

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 9/25/2020 5

Social / socio-economic impact Links between processes and workers. Process 9/25/2020 Environmental changes Social change processes Environmental impacts Social & socio-economic impacts Economic changes 6

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 SA 8000 Indicators ● ● ● UNCSD EPSILON (European Sustainability Indicators) MDG, OECD and GRI Indicators 9/25/2020 7

Social / socio-economic impact Selection of indicator categories (example) ● Employment (job creation and job loss) ● Equity ● Poverty ● Knowledge ● Interpersonal relationship ● Health ● Child labour 9/25/2020 8

Social / socio-economic impact Levels of data acquisition 9/25/2020 9

Methodology Hybrid Process & Input-Output economic LCA Input-output analysis Process analysis Data from: Interviews, local census, . . . Data from: National census, economic transaction table 9/25/2020 10

Methodology 9/25/2020 11

Case Study of 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 9/25/2020 12

Case Study of Firozabad GRM CO NG EL LPG KER RM CB AE SW WE CO NG EL RM LPG EL RM GRM production & transport Factory AE SW WE 9/25/2020 Glass Raw Material Coal Natural Gas Electricity Liquid Petroleum Gas Kerosene Raw Material Cardboard Air Emission Solid Waste Water Effluent KER EL RM CO NG RM CB EL Straightening Joining Cutting Hardening Sorting & Packaging AE SW AE SW Bangles transport 13

Case Study of Firozabad 9/25/2020 14

Case Study of Firozabad 9/25/2020 15

Case Study of Firozabad 7200 kgeq CO 2 9/25/2020 105500 MJ 58000 Rs 380 mandays 16

Case Study of Firozabad n. a. 9/25/2020 17

Case Study of Firozabad n. a. 9/25/2020 18

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 9/25/2020 19

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 9/25/2020 20

Thank you! 9/25/2020 21