Comparative environmental performance of small scale wastewater treatment systems in Norway : a life cycle analysis

Globally, the development of wastewater treatment systems evolved in order to treat wastewater so as to mitigate and reduce the public health issues as well as environmental impacts resulting from the discharge of untreated wastewater. To achieve this objective, treatment of wastewater is carried out with different technologies, some centralized and other decentralized. With further development in the wastewater management sector, sustainability of the wastewater treatment system with minimum environmental degradation became a global concern because all human individuals either living today or in future, have equal rights. Therefore, based on the sustainable development approach of wastewater treatment systems, various methods have been practiced to analyse and compare the wastewater treatment systems looking from the environmental, economic, technical and social point of view. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of them and has been successfully practiced globally, in order to analyse the environmental burdens and the potential impacts associated with a Wastewater Treatment (WWT) system. LCA is the compilation and evaluation of the inputs, outputs and the potential environmental impacts of a product or system throughout its life cycle i.e. the stage from “cradle-to-grave” (ISO 144040:2006(en)). It has become a successful tool in identifying opportunities to improve the environmental performance hence playing an integral role in decision making towards sustainability.M.MIN