Social Impact Analysis of Products under a Holistic Approach: A Case Study in the Meat Product Supply Chain

Abstract

Social impact assessment of products can be approached through different methodologies that need to be adapted to the particularities and features of the studied subject. Thus, the Social Life Cycle Assessment methodology can be used to assess different innovative practices of product manufacturing, under a circular economy approach, by identifying potential positive as well as negative impacts along products’ life cycle. This paper presents the results of the Social Life Cycle Impact Assessment of a reference product from the Spanish meat industry using existing and new innovative methods of social impact analysis. Worker discrimination, health and safety for workers, consumers and local community were identified as the social aspects with relevant significance into the business or for the influence on customer’s perception of the products studied. Therefore, results can represent a reference scenario for the future assessment of innovative solutions in the Spanish meet sector. Despite the scarce use of Social Life Cycle Impact Assessment, this case study is a good example of how this innovative kind of assessment can be helpful for companies to identify their weak and strong social performance areas and design strategies to improve in Social Responsibility Management.

Analysing the Social Acceptance of Bio-Based Products Made from Recycled Absorbent Hygiene Products in Europe

“…To advance with this line of research, the authors propose to update the data collected from consumers, which currently depicts the perception and opinions before the COVID-19 Pandemic, especially to confirm if people maintain the same key aspect, or if environmental aspects might have been replaced by health and safety issues. Furthermore, this methodological approach could be replicated in different type of products, or even extended to include a life cycle perspective with the conduction of Social Life Cycle Assessments [14]. Funding: This research is framed within EMBRACED project "Establishing a Multi-purpose Biorefinery for the Recycling of the organic content of AHP waste in a Circular Economy Domain".…”

“…However, it is necessary to involve society and especially consumers to learn from them about the social acceptance issues that might drive the change into this circular and bio-based way of production [3]. Further, learning about the social impact of products is useful for companies to generate more socially responsible products and processes [14]. Society is currently in the initial stages of a transition to the new circular economy model, as well as the standardisation of bio-based products.…”

Exploring social indicators in smallholder food systems: modeling children’s educational outcomes on crop-livestock family farms in Madagascar

“…Agri-food systems' social dimensions are frequently underaddressed, and agri-food applications of S-LCA remain limited (Tragnone et al, 2022;Arcese et al, 2023). More recent case studies tend to focus on qualitative social performance in agri-food systems (Chen and Holden, 2017;Muthu, 2018;Frank et al, 2020;Zira et al, 2020;Aranda et al, 2021;Brenes-Peralta et al, 2021), and rarely do they focus on smallholders (Marting Vidaurre et al, 2020;Mulyasari et al, 2023;Rahmah et al, 2023). In fact, the S-LCA guidelines only incorporated smallholders as vulnerable stakeholders in 2020 (UNEP, 2020; Arcese et al, 2023).…”

On the integration of Impact Assessment and Circular Economy: a literature review

“…Even though the most frequent relationship found between Impact Assessment and Circular Economy is that IA assesses the impacts of CE measures, the importance of assessing the impacts of Circular Economy measures to avoid weak approaches is highlighted by many authors analyzed throughout this dissertation (Albizzati et al, 2021;Bressanelli et al, 2019;Iturrondobeitia et al, 2022;Kovačič Lukman et al, 2021;Laso et al, 2018;Marrucci et al, 2022;Ncube et al, 2022;Schaubroeck et al, 2021;Subramanian et al, 2021). Additionally, Impact Assessment can help fill Circular Economy practice gaps, by, for example, assessing the social impacts of Circular Economy measures, which is also an important result of this work (Aranda et al, 2021;Kovačič Lukman et al, 2021;Reinales et al, 2020;Subramanian et al, 2021). To assess the impacts of CE measures, the main Impact Assessment tool used is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), but many articles discuss the need for a more integrated IA process that goes beyond the use of LCA (Balkenende & Bakker, 2015;Bressanelli et al, 2019;Saidani et al, 2021;Schaubroeck et al, 2021;Sumter et al, 2020;Verstraeten-Jochemsen et al, 2018).…”

“…Also using LCA to assess the impacts of waste were (Iodice et al, 2021), who used LCA to evaluate the sustainability of different construction and demolition scenarios to develop the Best Practice scenario. LCA was also used to assess the social impacts of Circular Economy measures as did Garcia-Muiña et al (2018) and Aranda et al (2021), who were able to measure, through Social Life Cycle…”