Social Life Cycle Assessment of Brine Treatment in the Process Industry: A Consequential Approach Case Study

Abstract

Social life cycle assessment (SLCA) was developed to complement the environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) and economic assessment. Contrary to LCA, SLCA is not yet standardized, and the consequential approach is little discussed in literature. This study aims to perform a consequential SLCA and investigate the applicability of the method in industrial decision making. The aforementioned assessment is done within the Zero Brine project, which works on zero liquid discharge technology for water, salt, and magnesium recovery from brine effluents. The developed SLCA systems are gate-to-gate, and the analysis is performed at two levels: Hotspot and site-specific. The system boundaries consist of a demineralized water (DW) production company, a chlor-alkali company, an electricity provider, a magnesium distributor in the Netherlands, and a Russian mining company. The latter exists only in the boundaries before the change due to the Zero Brine project, because recovered magnesium is expected to replace the Russian magnesium imported in the Netherlands. Within the system boundaries, the stakeholders contributing the most are the DW and the magnesium distributor companies. The former produces the brine and thus recovers the magnesium and salt. The latter is the exclusive distributor of Russian magnesium in the Netherlands. Overall, we find that the recovered magnesium results in improving social performance mainly in "Freedom of association and collective bargaining", "Fair salary", and "Health and Safety" due to decreasing the dependency of the Netherlands on Russia, while increasing operation in a country with much stronger environmental regulation and corporate commitment to sustainability issues. Modelling with SLCA may not result in the expected societal benefits, as the Russian community and workers may not benefit due to the large geographical boundaries of the system under study. Nevertheless, the application of the consequential approach can be considered suitable, yet complicated, for offering decision makers adequate social information. We recommend that decision makers in the DW company invest in magnesium recovery and that decision makers in the magnesium distributor company distribute the recovered magnesium.

Integrating Individual Behavior Dimension in Social Life Cycle Assessment in an Energy Transition Context

“…First, a literature search was performed regarding the application of S-LCA in energy studies in the Scopus database. Second, a recent S-LCA study [43] focusing on the Netherlands was investigated and additional indicators were considered to assess the social impacts of the energy transition in the Netherlands on a hotspot level. Third, in case existing indicators failed to show what are the potential bottlenecks of accelerating the Dutch energy transition, the S-LCA guidelines and methodological sheets [38,44] were examined to identify the human dimension and behavior in the existing stakeholder groups, and subcategories and indicators were developed based on literature findings of environmental psychology.…”

“…The scoring scheme is illustrated in Figure 2. Data collection for all existing indicators (added in Table 1) was performed from the literature [43], international organizations, national reports, and official national statistical data sources. Data collected for developed indicators corresponds to the years between 2017 and 2020, except for the "Civil society actors involvement in decision making" indicator which corresponds to 2013.…”

Social Consideration in Product Life Cycle for Product Social Sustainability

“…Table 1 indicates the sectors of the S-LCA studies. It shows that, to date, the social life cycle assessment has been evaluated in various sectors including the agricultural sector, such as [50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61] olive production [52], palm oil [53,54], sugarcane [55], pork production [56] cocoa production [57], honey [58], dairy farm [59], citrus production [60], and soybean [61]; the industrial sector, for example assessment of S-LCA on sugar industry [62], water [63,64], bioelectricity [65], energy [66], wood-based products [67], jewelry [68], waste management [69], computer software [70], laptop [71], bridges [72], technology [73], recycling [74], tourism [75], welding technology [76], (see Table 1). Walters and Mirkouei (2020) evaluated environmental and social LCA of the computer software industry to compare different scenarios to reduce time and CO 2 emission, and increase job satisfaction [70].…”

“…Use site specific analysis to discover social impacts. To increase social performances, reduce occupational accident [63].…”

Social-LCA. Methodological Proposal Applied to Physical Activity Program Implementation into Old People’s Routines

“…This article evaluates the social and socioeconomic aspects of the implementation of physical exercise programs for the elderly with the aim of proposing a basis for applying this methodology as a system for evaluating the social impact of this activity. The study follows the UNEP/SETAC Guidelines for being the guides that define the applicable methodologies for life cycle analysis [25][26][27].…”