Page 239 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

11.4 Life cycle social indicators 237
TABLE 11.6 Other typical indicators for economic assessment of the industrial systems.
Indicator
(Unit) Description
Economic It measures the economic benefits contributed by starting the system, such as improving the GDP
benefit
Total cost ($, It combines privately borne costs of a certain activity with those that are external to that activity,
¥, …) where all costs should be evaluated in a given base year (Bachmann, 2012)
Income ($,¥, …) It refers to money earned from the sale of products produced by the system, which is generally
divided into gross income and net income
Taxes ($,¥, …) It refers to the compulsory financial expenses that the assessed system needs to pay in the process
of production or operation
Economic risk It can be described as the likelihood that an investment will be affected by macroeconomic
conditions such as government regulation, exchange rates, or political stability

11.4 Life cycle social indicators

Compared to the life cycle-based environmental and economic assessments, life cycle-
based social assessment targets only social and sociological impacts through a range of cat-
egories, in which, the social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) is usually employed to measure the
impacts pertaining to the social concerns of an industrial system in its entire lifetime. How-
ever, the approach for measuring social performance is still in the development stage, while
the corresponding indicators are typically unquantifiable, which rely heavily on experts’ ex-
periences and evaluations. In this sub-section, a mini review on some well-known social as-
sessment methodologies developed so far is given, while the typical social indicators within
these methods are introduced.

11.4.1 Introduction of the social life cycle assessment
Social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) is recently emerging as a useful approach in sustain-
ability science, which can be employed for evaluating the social impacts of an industrial sys-
tem. Among the available evaluation frameworks regarding the social concerns, the following
five alternatives, including the GRI sustainability framework, UN millennium and sustain-
able development goals, SA 8000, ISO 26000, and UNEP and SETAC S-LCA guidelines would
be selected to be incorporated into the life cycle sustainability assessment of the industrial
systems (K€ uhnen and Hahn, 2017). In which, the GRI sustainability framework can be used
for identifying the social sustainability-related information, which is suitable for offering in-
formation regarding an organization’s positive or negative impacts on sustainable develop-
ment; however, it fails to offer performance measurement to support decision-making.
UN millennium and sustainable development goals aim at offering a potential normative
foundation and reference to indicate a positive contribution to sustainable development, but
they may not be suitable for evaluating the contributions at organizational or product level.
SA 8000 could offer a “cradle-to-gate” assessment regarding the social performance of a