SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY OF MICROALGAE PRODUCTS: A REVIEW
8th International Agriculture, Environment and Health Congress, Aydın, Türkiye, 22 - 24 Mayıs 2025, ss.178, (Özet Bildiri)
- Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Özet Bildiri
- Basıldığı Şehir: Aydın
- Basıldığı Ülke: Türkiye
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.178
- Bilecik Şeyh Edebali Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Sustainable development aims to ensure and maintain human well-being while taking into account the demands of present and future generations. Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) is one of three methodologies used for this, the others being environmental and economic. The UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative published the first Guidelines for S-LCA in 2009 for standardization. S-LCA's relevance has grown since then. Microalgae, a category of autotrophic microorganisms that exist in several habitats, have a fast growth rate and are environmentally friendly, therefore their application in the energy, food, agriculture, health and cosmetics sectors is rapidly expanding. This study explores the researches focused on the social impacts of microalgae and its products by using search engines Google Scholar and Scopus. As a result, the researchers started to study S-LCA of microalgae later than 2010s and are very limited, in contrast to this, the environmental studies date back to the 1990s and are overly widespread. The microalgae products are biofuel, biomass, fertilizer and feed in general. The majority of these limited studies select a numerical functional unit while one of them select it as the whole plant. They use different stakeholder category groups, besides workers are common along them. Evaluating the results, it is seen that the studies on social impacts of microalgae products are insufficient. More and further analysis with more stakeholder categories and large selection of subcategories are needed to understand social effects of the microalgal products.