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A novel social life cycle assessment method for determining workers’ human development: a case study of the sugarcane biorefineries in Brazil

  • SOCIETAL LCA
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Abstract

Purpose

The social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) methodology needs to advance in its methodological development, mainly regarding the impact assessment phase, in which a widely accepted method is missing. The goal of this study is to introduce a social metric to evaluate the human development of workers in production chains and economic sectors.

Methods

The applied characterization model of the proposed social metric was inspired by the Human Development Index (HDI), whose significance and wide use make it a good proxy to express human prosperity. Similar to HDI, our indicator called Workers’ Human Development Index (W-HDI) is derived from the geometric mean of the three dimensions of HDI, covering education, income, and health aspects of workers in different economic sectors linked to a given production chain. W-HDI proposal was tested by performing a case study from the sugarcane industry in Brazil, considering different sugarcane biorefinery configurations, including a couple of first-generation ethanol options and an integrated first- and second-generation ethanol production system (1G2G).

Results and discussion

The proposed metric was used to address the social impacts of different biorefinery scenarios. The scenario representing the first-generation ethanol production with basic technology achieved the lowest W-HDI score mostly because of the manual sugarcane harvesting system that contributed to a higher rate of occupational accidents (lower health dimension), fewer years of education, and lower wages than the other biorefinery scenarios. The highest W-HDI was obtained by the 1G2G scenario, mainly due to a more advanced technology reflected by the higher educational profile (more years of schooling) required to the workers and better wages. Additionally, our proposed W-HDI was applied in the assessment of Brazilian economic sectors, and most of them (84%) obtained medium or high development levels.

Conclusions

The present study contributes to the development of sustainability assessment tools by providing advances in the social life cycle assessment methodology. More specifically, the W-HDI is proposed to address the impact assessment phase with an indicator that can be applied in many sectors and production chains.

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Funding

FAPESP (2012/15359–1 — Economic input–output life cycle assessment as a tool for virtual sugarcane biorefinery), CAPES/CNPEM (Process 23038.006737/2012–56 — Applying of the social life cycle assessment in the sugarcane chain in Brazil), and the Global Environment Facility — GEF (BRA/10/G31 — Sugarcane renewable electricity — SUCRE) provided financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Brazilian Biorenewables National Laboratory (LNBR), Brazilian Center for Research in Energy and Materials (CNPEM), Campinas, São Paulo, 13083-970, Brazil

    Alexandre Souza, Marcos D. B. Watanabe & Antonio Bonomi

  2. Institute of Economics (IE), University of Campinas (Unicamp), Rua Pitágoras 353, Campinas, São Paulo, 13083-857, Brazil

    Marcelo Cunha

  3. Federal University of Technology - Paraná (UTFPR), R. Dep. Heitor Alencar Furtado, 5000, Bloco M, sala EM306-Cidade Industrial, 81280-340, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil

    Cássia M. L. Ugaya

  4. Department of Energy and Process Engineering, Industrial Ecology Programme, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Høgskoleringen, 1, 7491, Trondheim, Norway

    Otavio Cavalett

  5. CNPq fellow, Brazil

    Cássia M. L. Ugaya

Authors
  1. Alexandre Souza
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  2. Marcos D. B. Watanabe
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  3. Otavio Cavalett
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  4. Marcelo Cunha
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  5. Cássia M. L. Ugaya
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  6. Antonio Bonomi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alexandre Souza.

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Communicated by Marzia Traverso.

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Souza, A., Watanabe, M.D.B., Cavalett, O. et al. A novel social life cycle assessment method for determining workers’ human development: a case study of the sugarcane biorefineries in Brazil. Int J Life Cycle Assess 26, 2072–2084 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-021-01936-8

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