Abstract
Producing phosphorus (P) fertilizers with recycled P is desirable for efficient use of P resource. However, the current cost of P recycling facilities in Japan strongly discourages the government from adopting this practice. To expand consideration for a P recycling policy, the concept of social externality was introduced. Social issues, such as the violation of human rights in P mining in the Western Sahara, have been identified in recent studies; nevertheless, a systematic approach towards accountability was lacking. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to support a P recycling policy with a social life cycle assessment (SLCA) by contrasting the social impacts associated with mineral and recycled P fertilizers using the case study of Japan. We developed a framework based on the UNEP-SETAC SLCA Guidelines with a supplementary set of P-specific social indicators. The results showed that the marginal social impact associated with recycled P was much less relative to mineral P; however, even if we factored in the maximum recycling capacity, a mandate of P recycling policy in Japan would not mitigate the impacts significantly relative to the current situation because only 15% of P rocks could be substituted. In short, we showed that a semi-quantitative SLCA framework would be useful to communicate the wide spectrum of social impacts to policymakers.
Highlights
Efficient use of phosphorus (P) is critical to meet the growing demand of P fertilizers in modern agriculture as P is a scarce resource [1]
Based on the Guidelines, we developed a systematic social impact assessment framework for mineral P fertilizer and recycled P fertilizer from WWTP to support the future debate on the inclusion of social externalities
Before any advanced treatment of the data, we identified the social hotspots within the life cycle of P fertilizers consumed in Japan as aggregating the social impacts across different stakeholders or social categories might lead to information loss, affecting the interpretation
Summary
Efficient use of phosphorus (P) is critical to meet the growing demand of P fertilizers in modern agriculture as P is a scarce resource [1]. Previous studies have assessed the environmental impacts of mineral and recycled P fertilizers production from a life cycle perspective [4,5,6,7]. As the concentration of P in wastewater is much lower than mineral P deposits, the energy demand to produce recycled P fertilizers is often higher, or equivalent to that of mineral P fertilizers, depending on various technological choices and accounting methods [4]. Another important externality, the social impact of fertilizer application, was raised by Martinez-Blanco et al [8]. The assessment was not conclusive, a brief outline and research needs on social impact assessment were highlighted in their study
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