Abstract
With the aim of reducing the environmental burden of decentralized wastewater treatment plants in India, this project investigated five primary materials (stainless steel (SS), mild steel (MS), glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP), high density polyethylene (HDPE), and reinforced concrete cement (RCC)) in terms of the relative environmental impact that each would incur across 13 midpoint and 4 endpoint impact categories during the early life stages. The results showed that SS demonstrated substantially higher impact in total (5.47 Pt) and across each of the endpoint categories, most notably human health (3.12 Pt). Further investigations demonstrated that this was largely fed by the respiratory inorganics midpoint category that accounted for 50 % of the total impact (2.75 Pt), while global warming (0.93 Pt), non-renewable energy (0.70 Pt) and terrestrial ecotoxicity (0.62 Pt) were the only other considerable impacts. GFRP incurred the second greatest impact overall (2.32 Pt), while MS, RCC and HDPE followed with 1.82 Pt, 0.78 Pt, and 0.39 Pt respectively. HDPE afforded the greatest efficiency in all midpoint categories except carcinogens where RCC incurred the least environmental cost. Results were then compared with previous work and likely causal factors highlighted. Further study is recommended to investigate the longevity of the alternative materials in a wastewater containment role to support these results.
Highlights
As world leaders pledge to cut emissions and reduce environmental impact, greater focus is being given to the sustainable development of infrastructure to realise these gains (Arce and Gullón, 2000; Mirza, 2006; Doyle and Havlick, 2009; Zayed et al, 2011; United Nations (UN) General Assembly, 2015; Battacharya et al, 2020)
This paper aims to investigate the use of several alternative materials and their respective processes that may be used as primary materials during construction of a small, decentralized wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in India, and the relative environmental costs that each material can incur in that role
This study is considered a first step towards identifying alternative materials that may help reduce environmental impact of a packaged wastewater treatment systems
Summary
As world leaders pledge to cut emissions and reduce environmental impact, greater focus is being given to the sustainable development of infrastructure to realise these gains (Arce and Gullón, 2000; Mirza, 2006; Doyle and Havlick, 2009; Zayed et al, 2011; UN General Assembly, 2015; Battacharya et al, 2020). With clean water and sanitation officially recognised as a human right by the UN General Assembly, global momentum has been gaining to supply these services to those still lacking these basic facilities (World Health Organization, & United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund 2013; WHO, 2015; Cha et al, 2017). The World Health Organization (WHO) suggests a quarter of the world’s inhabitants still lack safe sanitation indicating significant amounts of water infrastructure is still needed (WHO, 2019). If this SDG is to be achieved by 2030 as targeted, an environmentally-sensitive approach to its implementation will be necessitated. Coverage of effective sanitation continues to be thwarted by financial and circumstantial constraints (Wilderer, 2005)
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