Social sustainability is a crucial component of resilient and circular value chains, as it concerns the well-being, rights, and working conditions of people involved throughout a product’s life cycle. For neodymium magnets – classified as critical raw materials (CRMs) and largely imported into the EU from regions with limited transparency – understanding social impacts is essential for building responsible and secure supply chains. At the same time, several global Digital Product Passport (DPP) initiatives are emerging, including the EU DPP, the United Nations Transparency Protocol (UNTP). Despite differing regulatory frameworks, these initiatives share common objectives: improving traceability and transparency, enabling sustainability and circularity, supporting regulatory compliance, reducing greenwashing, and strengthening ESG reporting. In the EU, DPPs will become mandatory for numerous product categories, beginning with batteries and textiles. Across these initiatives, social KPIs are increasingly recognized as relevant data points that complement environmental and material information. The aim of this work is to identify social key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to the life cycle of neodymium magnets. These indicators enable the evaluation of social risks and opportunities, support circular economy strategies, and provide structured inputs for future DPP data requirements. The methodology follows a systematic literature review according to PRISMA and incorporates international guidance such as the UNEP Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment (2020). Particular emphasis is placed on the end-of-life phase, where collection, recovery, and recycling of CRMs generate distinct social implications. The results are presented as a structured set of social KPIs that highlight current data gaps and enable more comprehensive assessments of social sustainability in CRM supply chains. Ultimately, integrating such indicators into circular value chains and into DPP systems helps improve transparency, foster responsible sourcing, increase the availability of secondary raw materials, and support compliance with human rights, health, and safety. The findings offer actionable guidance for industry in embedding social criteria into circular economy strategies and future DPP implementations.
Fuchs et al. (Thu,) studied this question.