Towards more circular building services: A social footprint of the sectors manufacturing and remanufacturing chillers for the European market

Buildings and construction are major drivers of anthropogenic environmental effects. Remanufacturing building products and especially chillers can help deliver a more sustainable renovation in Europe. While the environmental and economic benefits of this practice have been investigated, social aspects remain understudied. This research addresses the need to assess the social life cycle of new and remanufactured chillers while proposing innovative solutions to select social impact categories and explore social hotspots in detail.

We use social data from PSILCA and global multi-regional input-output data from Eora to quantify the social footprint associated with the sectors manufacturing and remanufacturing chillers in three major purveyors of the European market, i.e. China, Italy and Czechia. In doing so, we purposely limit our scope to 28 social impact categories out of the 55 categories available in PSILCA. These are selected where the impact intensity of at least one country exceeds the third quartile of the intensities of all sectors. Further, we disaggregate supply chains by using structural path analysis. In doing so, we further narrow our scope to the most critical impact category in each country (i.e. where the impact intensity is the most distant from the median of the intensities of the three countries).

The results reveal the significance of the social footprint of the sector manufacturing chillers in China. More specifically, 12 impact categories show abnormally high intensities, including Child labour, Forced labour and Trafficking in persons. In contrast, the social footprint of the sectors manufacturing chillers in Italy and Czechia is smaller, with the most critical impact category being Migration flows and Gender wage gap, respectively. The sectors manufacturing chillers in China and Czechia are responsible for around 40% of the contributions to the Association and bargaining rights and the Gender wage gap issues, respectively, suggesting an important opportunity for reducing these issues by enforcing appropriate policies in these sectors. The results also show that remanufacturing chillers in Italy or Czechia is not always the best option to minimise social impacts.

This research brings new knowledge to the field of social life cycle assessment. It successfully demonstrates the applicability of two innovative methods, i.e. one to select social impact categories and one to explore social hotspots in detail. This work will contribute to raising our awareness of the social issues embedded in the products we buy and especially those we install in our buildings that we are claiming to be sustainable.