Scholarly record

SOCIAL IMPACTS OF CHEMICAL PRODUCTS ON LOCAL COMMUNITIES AND THEIR MEASUREMENT

Jan Vavra, Simona Munzarova, Marie Bednarikova, Zuzana Mokrenova

Abstract

The journey towards sustainability requires sustainable production and consumption and also requires social responsibility of organizations. Improvements of social performance of companies along with sustained economic profitability and environmental responsibility contribute notably to sustainable development. Company stakeholders – mostly consumers, local communities and society, but many others as well, are more and more asking themselves questions about social impacts of products and production processes. Under pressure of stakeholders’ interest, many companies solve environmental tasks of company’s production processes and alongside the social circumstances under which a product is made to ensure the products are produced in a sustainable way. Social impacts of production processes on the workers, the consumers, the local communities, the society, and other shareholders are under close supervision of management and social impacts assessment methods are developed and improved. Local communities represent an important group of stakeholders, therefore social impacts related to local communities must be adequately considered. Production and consumption of chemicals represent actual or at least potential risk for local communities. Social impacts like Delocalization and Migration, Community Engagement, Cultural Heritage, Respect of Indigenous Rights, Local Employment, Access to Immaterial and Material Resources, Safe and Healthy Living Conditions or Secure Living Conditions must be identified and fairly evaluated by chemical companies. The quality of life for communities surrounding chemical companies must be monitored and continuously improved. The standard of living and community health and security must be supported by systematically managed assessment of social impacts of chemical products along the whole product life cycle. The contribution deals with the perceived importance of social impacts of chemical products or chemical production processes on local communities. The main objective is to determine industry-specific social impacts for chemicals and discuss whether suitable indicators for their measurements on corporate level can be found. Application of indicators offered by the Social Life Cycle Assessment method will be closely tested and discussed.

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