Environmental and economic assessment of proposed on-site wastewater management system in multi-storey residential building

Wastewater recovery for sustainable agricultural systems in the circular economy - A systematic literature review of Life Cycle Assessments

Water availability and quality are known to affect agricultural production and nutrition. The aim of this study was to elaborate a systematic literature review of the most sustainable ways of wastewater treatment towards achieving circular economy (CE) in agro-industry activities. From the SLR, the authors selected twenty-seven papers that they classified into the three research themes of recovery of wastewater into irrigation water, extraction of sludge for production of bio-based compounds, and recovery of nutrients for soil amendment, including recovering of feeds for aquaculture, and recovery of nutrient biosolids for soil amendment. Results underlined that the recovery of nutrients biosolids for soil amendment can generate a GWP gain up to - 37 kg CO2-eq. So, the review highlighted that wastewater recovery for multiple purposes can be truly effective for the environmental sustainability of agricultural systems, and that LCA is a valid tool to assess and improve that sustainability. Under this perspective, this SLR's findings can stimulate public administrations at national and local scales in their planning and funding activities towards implementing circular bioeconomy paths based upon wastewater recovery for a sustainable, resilient agriculture. Overall, the authors believe that their article was effective in overviewing the current wastewater recovery paths in the CE context, and in highlighting key methodological aspects and findings of the reviewed LCAs, to advance the specialised literature and knowledge, and to guide practitioners for future LCA applications in the field. Finally, through its main findings, the article effectively contributes to the whole research project which it is part of and which the authors are deeply involved in. That research is performed under the Progetto GRINS "Growing Resilient, Inclusive and Sustainable" thanks to a PNRR M4C2- Investment 1.3 - GRINS with the aim of "Building a dataset for the circular economy of the main Italian production systems".

An integrated assessment of environmental, economic, social and technological parameters of source separated and conventional sanitation concepts: A contribution to sustainability analysis

Resource recovery and reuse from domestic wastewater has become an important subject for the current development of sanitation technologies and infrastructures. Different technologies are available and combined into sanitation concepts, with different performances. This study provides a methodological approach to evaluate the sustainability of these sanitation concepts with focus on resource recovery and reuse. St. Eustatius, a small tropical island in the Caribbean, was used as a case study for the evaluation. Three source separation-community-on-site and two combined sewerage island-scale concepts were selected and compared in terms of environmental (net energy use, nutrient recovery/reuse, BOD/COD, pathogens, and GHG emission, land use), economic (CAPEX and OPEX), social cultural (acceptance, required competences and education), and technological (flexibility/adaptability, reliability/continuity of service) indicators. The best performing concept, is the application of Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Bed (UASB) and Trickling Filter (TF) at island level for combined domestic wastewater treatment with subsequent reuse in agriculture. Its overall average normalised score across the four categories (i.e., average of average per category) is about 15% (0.85) higher than the values of the remaining systems and with a score of 0.73 (conventional activated sludge - centralised level), 0.77 (UASB-septic tank (ST)), 0.76 (UASB-TF - community level), and 0.75 (ST - household level). The higher score of the UASB-TF at community level is mainly due to much better performance in the environmental and economic categories. In conclusion, the case study provides a methodological approach that can support urban planning and decision-making in selecting more sustainable sanitation concepts, allowing resource recovery and reuse in small island context or in other contexts.