Social Organizational Life Cycle Assessment: an approach for identification of relevant subcategories for wine production in Italy

This study proposes a systematic approach for identifying the relevant social issues of a sector or company to be integrated within the Social Organizational Life Cycle Assessment framework. The approach is implemented through the Pugh matrix analysis in a wine company located in Abruzzo, Italy.

The Pugh matrix is suitably modelled for social organizational life cycle assessment by considering the subcategories, i.e. social issues, and the stakeholder categories proposed by the Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment UNEP/SETAC. The model is implemented by involving 31 consumers, 28 workers, 36 local community, and 7 value chain actors who were interviewed and asked to give a score by comparing pairwise the subcategories of each stakeholder, respectively.

The results allowed the identification of the most relevant subcategories for the case under study. For example, the health and safety issue is evident as being relevant for different stakeholders (i.e. worker, local community and consumers). Furthermore, starting from the relevant subcategories, a set of indicators was identified. The indicators are allocated at two levels depending on the kind of data used for assessing the indicators (sites visit, consultation of reports or surveys and questionnaires).

This study proposes and implements a model within the Social Organizational Life Cycle Assessment framework as well as Social Life Cycle Assessment in order to support decision-makers in sustainability decisions, taking into account the entire value chain over time.