Sustainable Wastewater Treatment

For a long time, wastewater needed only to be carried away from the human settlement intoa nearby river, lake, sea, or groundwater. However, with increasing population and industrialactivity, the volume and composition of the wastewater needed some mechanical, biological,or chemical treatment before discharge. In this chapter, wastewater treatment is placed intothe context of sustainable development, with its main aspects of environmental, economic,and social concerns, both for future and current generations. The wide spectra of indicatorsand assessment methods that are used to assess the sustainability of the wastewater treatmentmethods are presented. The theme throughout the chapter is a systems view that shows us that sustainability cannot be assessed only at the scale of the wastewater treatment facility.The fence or walls of the treatment plant are a too narrow scope for a proper sustainabilityassessment as we will see.