Abstract
The estimation and quantification of external environmental costs (hidden costs) are crucial to sustainability assessments of treated wastewater reuse projects. These costs, however, are rarely considered in economic analysis studies. In this work, monetized life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) were combined into a hybrid model to calculate cradle-to-farm gate external environmental costs (EEC) and internal costs (IC) of producing 1 t of plant-based product irrigated with reclaimed water in a Mediterranean context. The total cost was calculated by combining monetized LCA and LCC results. The results for the crops under consideration were 119.4 €/t for tomatoes, 344.4 €/t for table grapes, and 557 €/t for artichokes. Our findings show that there are significant hidden costs at the farm level, with EEC accounting for 57%, 23%, and 38% of the total cost of tomatoes, table grapes, and artichokes, respectively. Electricity use for water treatment and fertilization generated most of the EEC driven by the global warming, particulate matter, acidification, and fossil resource scarcity impact categories. When compared to groundwater, the higher internal costs of reclaimed water were offset by lower external costs, particularly when supported by low-energy wastewater treatment. This demonstrates that incorporating EEC into economic analyses might generate a better understanding of the profitability of treated wastewater reuse in crop production. In Italy and the Mediterranean region, research on the sustainability of water reuse in irrigation through life cycle thinking is still limited. Using a multi-metric approach, our analysis brought new insights into both economic and environmental performance – and their tradeoff relationships in wastewater reuse for irrigation of agricultural crops. In future research, it would be of interest to use different monetization methods as well as to investigate social externalities to explore their size and role in the total external costs.
Highlights
The total environmental costs (EEC) of 1 t of the crop at the farm gate was estimated at 67.7 €/t for tomatoes, 80.1 €/t for table grapes, and 212.8 €/t for artichokes
EECs and total costs for table grapes and artichokes while increasing them for tomatoes Overall, our model shows that crop yield, energy expenditures, characteristics of the water source, and irrigation volumes all influence performance
Cost accounting incorporating hidden costs has become an important issue in economic feasibility analyses
Summary
Irrigated agriculture in the Mediterranean is under considerable pressure to produce more with less water [1]. Conventional groundwater and surface water resources have been over-extracted, resulting in a multi-faceted crisis with ecological, economic, and social dimensions. In this context, a mix of supply-enhancing and demandmanaging options becomes essential for the economic viability of farming systems. The European Commission has advocated the use of reclaimed water for agricultural irrigation (water reuse) as a relevant solution to address water scarcity [2] and has recently approved regulation 2020/741 [3] to harmonize and improve water reuse in the European Union
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