The awareness on social and ethical issues caused by products´ life cycle is increasing, particularly in sectors such as extraction of raw materials and mining that contain potential high risk for workers´ safety and health.
The stone industry plays an important economic role in Italy and worldwide and potentially provides negative impacts on environment and society. Indeed, its supply chain directly and indirectly impacts the natural and human environment along all stages. At the same time, the stone industry contributes considerably to economic growth and wealth creation for local communities and workers and provides raw materials for the entire building sector.
Italy, especially Massa Carrara area, is well known as the main producer of Bianco Carrara marble, that has a very high aesthetic value.
The quarries of Carrara provide most of the marble used in Italy and Europe for sculpture and other ornamental work, along with the large amount of blocks, which are sent in raw or finished form to every parts of the world such as United States, Russia United Arab Emirates (UAE) (Amso International, 2017). The relevance of the product and its environmental impacts led to the decision of the European Commission to develop a dedicated Ecolabel scheme for hard floor covering (Commission Decision 2009/607/EC)
While the Ecolabel in its current form only considers environmental impacts, the raw material extraction, quarries and mining sites also present a high potential of social impacts on workers and local communities.
Considering the current revision of the Ecolabel criteria (Commission Decision 2009/607/EC), within this study we propose suitable, practical and relevant social indicators which cover positive and negative social impacts within the Ecolabel Scheme. Therefore, this study is structured in three parts:
- Review on the state of the art on social criteria considered within the stone and hard floor industry
- Review of existing Ecolabel criteria on social aspects (e.g. European Ecoflower)
- Proposal of social indicator set for hard floor coverings
The social indicator set developed can serve for both, a proposal for the Ecolabel criteria revision towards social considerations and a guide on how to determine the sustainability performance of the hard floor coverings. Furthermore, list of challenges and benefits for social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) implementation can be identified and presented to support the current revision of the Guidelines on Social Life Cycle Assessment (UNEP, 2009).
Key words: social life cycle assessment, hard floor coverings, ecolabel criteria
5e. Sustainable consumption and consumers
