Sustainability's third pillar: Social LCAs connect to packaging

My March 2013 article in this space talked about a long journey as a metaphor for sustainability and how a holistic approach is still a work in progress. This vision of sustainability is often described as a house with three equally important pillars: economic development, social accountability and environmental stewardship. Each of the three areas has to be paid due attention and timely corrections must be made to eventually reach the journey's goal of sustained long term growth and prosperity accessible to all.

In most societies, economic stability rightly gets the lion's share of attention, though environmental consequences are also starting to be factored into business decisions. Now, new developments in social life-cycle assessment (LCA) are paving the way to finally give a quantifiable means to incorporate the often underrepresented social implications of a global economy.

Released a couple of months ago, the Social Hotspots Database "aims to foster greater collaboration in improving social conditions worldwide by providing the data and tools necessary for improved visibility of social hotspots in product supply chains." Given this mission, the SHD effectively enables package and product developers, companies, governments, academia and others to understand operations-related social risks by:

1. Identifying the social area of high concern related to their sector(s) of activity.
2. Allowing an entity to investigate the risk these hotspots represent for their operations.
3. Helping to set up processes to track activities further into the supply chain for second, third and fourth tier relations to ultimately mitigate the risks and improve the situation.

With this comprehensive database, LCA can expand from environmental assessment to include social hotspot analysis. Companies can effectively use this method to quickly identify risks associated with contracted and subcontracted work and even their own facilities. Knowing and understanding the key social concerns associated with your company's activities arms your company with pertinent questions to ask of the appropriate supply chain partners. 

Key social hotspots measures are based on Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) models and are grouped into five top level categories: Labor Rights, Health & Safety, Human Rights, Governance and Community. Each category tracks a wide set of indicators that together provide a detailed overview of sector-based known conditions in the country of interest. On the SHD website you can explore a single issue—such as forced labor—on the world map, analyze multiple issues as bar charts for selected country-specific sectors, or compare the Social Hotspot Indexes for country-specific sectors and identify the major contributing themes within a category. 

This is a big development towards taking more holistic action, because for the first time, all three aspects of sustainability can be quantified simultaneously. Inherently, the concept of sustainability weaves a fabric of human activities and their intimate connections to the planet. Social aspects are a component of those human activities, particularly those that are tied to economic prosperity. The SHD is a body of work that ties economic prosperity back to its effects on social development. The life cycle of package and product can now easily incorporate all three core components of sustainability. I highly recommend checking out the Social Hotspots Database website.

Author Minal Mistry is senior manager of sustainability solutions at GreenBlue and the Sustainable Packaging Coalition. For additional information, visit www.sustainablepackaging.org.

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