Social Life Cycle Inventory and Impact Assessment of Informal recycling

ABSTRACT In order to meet the growing needs of information and communication technology, companies are producing new and improved products every day. With every new product in the market another product becomes obsolete. These obsolete products are being added to the world's fastest growing waste stream. 20-50 million computers become waste each year. It has been estimated that 20% of electronic waste is formally recycled, while 80% is shipped to developing countries where it is recycled informally through crude process. It's manually dismantled, burned, dumped and dipped in acids to extract precious metals. One such nation which is at the receiving end of this waste stream is Pakistan. This business has become a very profitable business and requires very little expertise to conduct these crude procedures. These activities do not just add toxics to the environment but has great social and health impact on its workers. There lies a great need to study the impacts of these processes on environment, workers, community and the society. In order to study this, a detailed on-site inventory and assessment of informal electronic waste recycling has been conducted using the UNEP guidelines on Social Life Cycle Assessment. This study shows that apart from income generation and recovery of various metals and materials, informal recycling has drastic impacts on its workers and the local community

Investigating fairness in global supply chains: applying an extension of the living wage to the Western European clothing supply chain.

YesThis paper explores the issue of fairness in global supply chains. Taking the Western European clothing supply chain as a case study, we demonstrate how applying a normative indicator in Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) can contribute academic and practical insights into debates on fairness. To do so, we develop a new indicator that addresses some of the limitations of the living wage for SLCA. We extend the standard form of living wage available for developing countries to include income tax and social security contributions. We call this extension 'living labour compensation'. Using publically available data, we estimate net living wages, gross living wages, and living labour compensation rates for Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC) in 2005. We then integrate living labour compensation rates into an input-output framework, which we use to compare living labour compensation and actual labour compensation in the BRIC countries in the Western European clothing supply chain in 2005. We find that in 2005, actual labour compensation in the Western European clothing supply chain was around half of the living labour compensation level, with the greatest difference being in the Agricultural sector. Therefore, we argue that BRIC pay in the Western European clothing supply chain was unfair. Furthermore, our living labour compensation estimates for BRIC in 2005 are ~ 35% higher than standard living wage estimates. Indeed, adding income taxes and employee social security contributions alone increases the living wage by ~ 10%. Consequently, we argue there is a risk that investigations based on living wages are not using a representative measure of fairness from the employee's perspective and are substantially underestimating the cost of living wages from an employer's perspective. Finally, we discuss implications for retailers and living wage advocacy groups. Living labour compensation extends the living wage, maintaining its strengths and addressing key weaknesses. It can be estimated for multiple countries from publically available data and can be applied in an input-output framework. Therefore, it is able to provide a normative assessment of fairness in complex global supply chains. Applying it to the Western European clothing supply chain, we were able to show that pay for workers in Brazil, Russia, India, and China is unfair, and draw substantive conclusions for practice

Social Impacts of GM Crops in Agriculture: A Systematic Literature Review

It has recently been argued that the fragmented knowledge on the social impacts of genetically modified (GM) crops is contributing to the polarised debate on the matter. This paper addresses this issue by systematically reviewing 99 peer-reviewed journal articles published since 2004 on the social impacts of GM crops in agriculture; summarising current knowledge, and identifying research gaps. Economic impact studies currently dominate the literature and mainly report that GM crops provide economic benefits for farmers. Other social impacts are less well studied, but present a more complex picture. Studies on access to and benefits of GM crops show that these vary significantly depending on the political and regulatory setting. Substantial evidence indicates that intellectual property rights (IPR) and the private industry’s dominance limit the access and utility of available GM crops to many farmers. Wellbeing is frequently discussed in the literature, but rarely investigated empirically. Existing evidence is contradictory and inconclusive. Impact studies from the Global North are virtually non-existent. Moreover, two-thirds of publications are based on previously published empirical evidence, indicating a need for new empirical investigations into the social impacts of GM crops in agriculture

Social life cycle assessment: methodologies and practice

Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) is a relatively new discipline and it is an expanding field of research. After an initial period characterized by the application of the SLCA Guidelines of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative, now practitioners are going through an in-depth and critical analysis. The epistemological and methodological aspects of SLCA are now dealt with, as a basis for defining the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of the methodology.This chapter provides an overview of where we are in SLCA, from the methodological and practical point of view, discussing new trends and approaches, and also in the context of a Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment