Social Impact Assessment of Sugar Production Operations in South Africa:

A Social Life Cycle Assessment Perspective

1,* 2
Takalani Musundwa Nemarumane and Charles Mbohwa
Department of Quality and Operations Management, University of Johannesburg, Auckland Park Bunting Road,
Johannesburg, South Africa

Abstract
The objectives of the study were guided by the guidelines on social life cycle assessment of products of the South African
Sugar Industry developed by the United Nations Environmental Programme and SETAC initiatives. The study’s main focus
is on health and safety, freedom of association, employee’s wages, and Gender equality in the workplace, working
conditions, crime and the social wellbeing of the communities that surround the sugar industry’s operations. Field
research, historic comparative research, interviews and questionnaires were used for the collection of relevant data.
Although it is good that the sugar industry decreases the level of employment in some areas, the decrease in sugar
production during the season of 2010-2011 could have major financial and social challenges for these areas, and could
also impact the rest of South Africa.

Keywords:
Social life cycle impacts; Sugar production social sustainability; social LCA methods development and use

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1 INTRODUCTION
The study will focus on the social impact of the sugar industry in
South Africa. A social impact assessment is a method that aims to
assess social features of the product and their positive and negative
aspects in terms of its processing of raw material to the final stages
of its disposal Maloa (2001). The South African Sugar Industry
employs 77000 people, who work directly for the industry and
350 000 who are employed indirectly employment, this makes the
sugar industry in South Africa to be one of the largest contributors to
employment in agriculture within the country. There are more than
42 000 registered cane growers, 1660 farmers have large farms,
and 40 600 have small plots of sugar cane, Voigt (2009).
1.1 Goal and Scopes
The following were the objectives of the study:
 To identify the social impacts of the sugar growing and
milling within the sugar industry
 To determine how employees of the sugar industry relate
with the organisation in terms of freedom of association,
wages, gender equality, working conditions and health
and safety.
 To identify how the local communities are view the
operations of the sugar industry in relation to community
services, service facilities, environment, crime and health
and safety.
The results of this study are meant to be communicated to the
external affairs department at the South African Sugar Association
(SASA), the other various decision makers within the sugar industry,
and to government for better strategic and tactical planning. The
functional unit was set at one tonne of sugar produced using the
current methods of cane growing and cane milling in South Africa.
1.2 System Boundary
The system considered for this study was one in which sugar is
produced from sugar cane stalks. The sugar processes that the
study is concerned with are, the sugar growing phase, the
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Corresponding author.
harvesting phase and the Milling phase. These are explained as
following subsystems for SLCA were taken into account:
 Growing Phase: Sugar cane is grown in various stages.
The first stage is land preparation, were the soil is fed
with fertilisers and enough moisture to accommodate and
grow the cane stalks. The second stage becomes the
germinating stage where only about two leaves appear
on the stem of the planted cane. The next stages are the
Tillering, grand growth and maturation stages. These
stages vary from 15- 20 days and 3 months from the
cane plantation day, at these stages the cane stalks grow
to maturity. The last stage is the cane cutting were the
matured cane stalks are prepared for transportation and
processing.
The figure 1 illustrates the highlighted areas within the flow chart of
sugar production that the researcher focused on.
 Milling Phase: Sugar milling is concerned with the
processing of the cane stalks, Cane preparation, Milling,
Diffusion, Evaporation, Sugar boiling, Separation of
crystals from molasses Sugar drying and Sugar refining.
These are illustrated in Figure 2, which a diagrammatic
representation of the sugar milling process.
2 INVENTORY ANALYSIS
The inventory analysis is concerned with the process in which the
data is collected. Within this chapter, the data is validated and the
system boundaries established. This chapter focuses on the
assembling of data which is later used in the impact assessment,
UNEP (2009).
The data for the study was collected using two sets of
questionnaires. One set was used to gather data from the
employees of the sugar industry, specifically the sugar millers and
the sugar growers. The second set of questionnaires was directed to
the local communities, which are directly and indirectly impacted by
the operations of both the sugar millers and the sugar growers. Both
sets of questionnaires were distributed to the three main sugar
growing and milling areas in South Africa, namely Kwa-Zulu Natal,
Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape.

20th CIRP International Conference on Life Cycle Engineering, Singapore, 2013

712 T.M. Nemarumane and C. Mbohwa

INPUT
Raw materials: sugar cane, water, and chemicals,
fertilizers

Raw material and Manufacturing,

energy acquisition processing:
Sugar cane, energy, milling, Distribution, Use, reuse, Recover,
water, chemicals cogeneration, and transportation maintenance recycle
packaging

OUTPUT

Usable products Social impacts

 Sugar  Freedom of association
 Electricity  Wages
 Bi- products: molasses,  Gender equality
bagasse  Health and Safety
 Working Conditions
 Crime
 Access to goods and Services
 Local Employment
 Cultural Heritage

Figure 1: Illustrates the revised Flow Chart for Production of Sugar Cane (Mashoko 2010).

Figure 2: Which a diagrammatic representation of the sugar milling process. (Source: Centre for Disease Control and Prevention 2009).