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Comparative life cycle sustainability assessment of urban water reuse at various centralization scales

  • NEW PARADIGM IN URBAN DEVELOPMENT: LIFE CYCLE THINKING AND SUSTAINABILITY
  • Published:
The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

Population growth and urbanization lead to increasing water demand, putting significant pressure on natural water sources. The rising amounts of domestic wastewater (WW) in urban areas may be treated to serve as an alternative water source that may alleviate this pressure. This study examines sustainability of utilizing reclaimed domestic wastewater in urban households for toilet flushing and garden irrigation. It models a city characterized by water scarcity, using a coal-based electricity mix.

Methods

Four approaches were compared: (0) Business-as-usual (BAU) alternative, where the central WW treatment plant effluent is discharged to nature; (1) central WW treatment and urban reuse of the effluent produced; (2) semi-distributed greywater treatment and reuse, at cluster scale; (3) Distributed greywater treatment and reuse, at building scale. Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA), social LCA (S-LCA), and life cycle costing (LCC) were applied to the system model of the above scenarios, with seawater desalination as the source for potable water. System boundaries include water supply, WW collection, and treatment facilities. Analytical hierarchy process (AHP), a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methodology, was integrated into the life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) framework as a means for weighting sustainability criteria through judgment elicitation from a panel of 20 experts.

Results and discussion

Environmentally and socially, the two distributed alternatives perform better in most impact categories. Socially, semi-distributed (cluster scale) reuse is somewhat advantageous over the fully distributed alternative (building scale), due to the benefits of community engagement. Economically, the cluster-level scenario is the most preferable, while the building-scale scenario is the least preferable. A hierarchical representation of the problem’s criteria was constructed, according to the principals of AHP. Each criterion was weighted and those of extreme low importance were eliminated, while maintaining the integrity of the experts’ judgments. Weighted and aggregated sustainability scores revealed that cluster level reclamation, under modeled conditions, is the most sustainable option and the BAU scenario is the least sustainable. The other two alternatives, centralized and fully distributed reclamation, obtained similar intermediate scores.

Conclusions

Distributed urban water reuse was found to be more sustainable than current practice. Different alternative solutions are advantageous in different ways, but overall, the reclamation and reuse of greywater at the cluster level seems to be the best option among the three reuse options examined in this assessment. AHP proved an effective method for aggregating the multiple sustainability criteria. The hierarchical view maintains transparency of all local weights while leading to the final weight vector.

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Abbreviations

AHP:

Analytical hierarchy process

BAU:

Business as usual

CR:

Consistency ratio

EOL:

End of life

FU:

Functional unit

GW:

Greywater

LCA:

Life cycle assessment

LCC:

Life cycle costing

LCSA:

Life cycle sustainability assessment

LCT:

Life cycle thinking

MCDA:

Multi-criteria decision analysis

O&M:

Operation and maintenance

PW:

Potable water

RBC:

Rotating biological contactor

RW:

Reclaimed water

S-LCA:

Social life cycle assessment

SWD:

Sea water desalination

WW:

Wastewater

WWTP:

Wastewater treatment plant

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Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to the anonymous experts who took part in this study, contributing their time and expertise.

Funding

This study was partially funded by the Israel Water Authority, under grant 4422444402.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, 3200003, Haifa, Israel

    Tamar Opher, Eran Friedler & Aviad Shapira

Authors
  1. Tamar Opher
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  2. Eran Friedler
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  3. Aviad Shapira
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tamar Opher.

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Responsible editor: Marzia Traverso

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Opher, T., Friedler, E. & Shapira, A. Comparative life cycle sustainability assessment of urban water reuse at various centralization scales. Int J Life Cycle Assess 24, 1319–1332 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-018-1469-1

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