Calculating a Social Handprint

1. Context Most of the research efforts in Social LCA have been invested in developing methods to calculate what we might call a social footprint — an assessment of the risks for worker and human “exposure” to adverse... [ view full abstract ]

1. Context
Most of the research efforts in Social LCA have been invested in developing methods to calculate what we might call a social footprint — an assessment of the risks for worker and human “exposure” to adverse conditions and outcomes. While this is a necessary step, it is also important to value efforts to bring positive changes in supply chains — including but not limited to the reduction of risks of negative condition exposures. If positive impacts can be measured or assessed in units commensurate with the negative ones, the resulting findings may lend themselves to application within the growing body of work on Net Positive sustainability as well. So far, Net Positive methods address environmental impacts but have not been extended to include social factors.

2. Objectives
In the research presented here, we set out to develop a synthesis of existing work on Environmental Handprint assessment and Handprint-Based NetPositive Assessment (Norris 2015; see http://www.chgeharvard.org/resource/handprint-based-netpositive-assessment) together with the methods developed by New Earth in the context of its Social Hotspots Database (Benoit Norris et al. 2015).

3. Methodology/approach
Social LCA applications using the Social Hotspot Database implement Life Cycle Attribute Assessment — quantitative assessment of the degree to which the processes in a life cycle or supply chain exhibit attributes or characteristics of interest. Handprint-Based NetPositive assessment measures positive changes which an organization or individuals bring about, relative to “business as usual”, measured in the same units as footprints or negative impacts. We thus extend the environmental handprinting approach to address social risks in supply chains and life cycles.


4. Findings and contributions.
We provide examples of how companies can, and already are, creating social risk handprints. Through these applications we also illustrate how a company or other organization can pursue Net Positive Social risk impact. The presented framework provides a way to assess, report, and encourage positive social impacts without ignoring or downplaying in any way the social footprint — indeed, we describe how these methods are designed to increase attention to, and progress on reducing, social footprints.