Abstract
Most of the definitions of sustainability include three basic pillars: economic, environmental, and social. The economic pillar has always been evaluated but not necessarily in the sense of economic sustainability. On the other hand, the environmental pillar is increasingly being considered, while the social pillar is weakly developed. Focusing on the environmental and social pillars, the use of methodologies to allow a wide assessment of these pillars and the integration of the assessment in a few understandable indicators is crucial. This article is structured into two parts. In the first part, a review of life cycle impact assessment methods, which allow a comprehensive assessment of the environmental and social pillars, is carried out. In the second part, a complete environmental and social sustainability assessment is made using the ecoinvent database and ReCiPe method, for the environmental pillar, and SOCA database and simple Social Impact Weighting method, for the social pillar. This methodology was used to compare three optimized bridges: two box-section post-tensioned concrete road bridges with a variety of initial and maintenance characteristics, and a pre-stressed concrete precast bridge. The results show that there is a high interrelation between the environmental and social impact for each life cycle stage.
Highlights
Since its definition in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development [1], the concept of sustainability has been attracting increasing attention in many sectors of our society
Vallance et al [5] stated that this is due to the fact that the definition of social sustainability is quite ambiguous, and Murphy [3] indicated that there are no clear criteria for assessing sustainability
Impacts have been grouped into four stages: impacts related to the manufacturing of the materials required for the construction of the alternatives, including every extraction activity of raw materials and production of the final construction materials, as well as the transport activities from the production facilities to the installation site
Summary
Since its definition in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development [1], the concept of sustainability has been attracting increasing attention in many sectors of our society It was not until 2015 that the first set of Sustainable Development Goals was established as a response to growing social needs and environmental degradation [2]. There is a trend toward giving the social pillar the same importance as the economic and environmental pillars [7,8,9,10] This is demonstrated by the fact that 6 of the 17 sustainable development goals proposed by the United Nations focus on social problems
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