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• Sewage treatment deficits for forecasted rural and urban populations computed for India. • Scenario analysis to aid urban planners and decision-makers plan sustainable sewage treatment. • Life cycle costs computed considering land, capital, operation and maintenance cost. • Investing in land for natural treatment systems beneficial than energy-intensive treatment. • Lowered greenhouse gas emissions due to natural and hybrid treatment systems. Sewage treatment involves a trade-off of land vs. energy and the location of installing Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) strongly impacts the decisions regarding treatment technologies. In the wake of rapid urbanization, deteriorating freshwater quality and water scarcity, it is crucial to plan adequate and low-cost sewerage infrastructure that can improve the quality of life in rural and urban areas. The present work involves a novel life cycle analysis through six scenarios generated from a holistic perspective that can aid urban planners and urban local bodies in planning the sewage treatment facilities in their cities, towns or villages. Instead of planning sewerage infrastructure for a long-term period of thirty years, it is suggested to create and operate the STPs only for the upcoming decade. Further, owing to the drawbacks of mechanized and natural treatment systems, adopting a mix of these treatment approaches in planning infrastructure is suggested and the benefits of implementing the same are quantified and discussed. Implementing these strategies results in almost 30 % cost savings and 40 % reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, hence, investing in land for natural treatment systems is suggested instead of incurring heavy electricity bills for mechanized treatment systems. The land cost significantly affects the decision-making regarding treatment technology selection; hence, the variation in the life cycle cost of different sewage treatment approaches is assessed for varying land rates in India. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of our study is to analyse how urban lifestyles impact on the environment to offer knowledge based inspiration for effective environmental policies relating to contemporary Danish consumption patterns. The application of a Personal Metabolism (PM) coupled Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach supported by cluster analysis facilitated the identification of consumption-related clusters based on central demographic and life style parameters such as income, diet, transport, and age. The environmental performance of the assessed consumption patterns were calculated in a full life cycle perspective and covering all relevant environmental impacts both on midpoint and endpoint levels by applying the ReCiPe 2008 Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methodology. The results of the contribution analysis revealed that climate change, particulate matter, human toxicity, fossil depletion and ionizing radiation contribute most to the three endpoints covered by ReCiPe 2008. Results of cluster analysis indicated that demographic parameters such as income level and age of the respondents has a strong influence on the environmental impacts. The influence of lifestyle aspects such as choice of diet, use of private car and household size was also investigated. These three parameters were found to significantly influence the consumption related environmental impacts of urban Danish residents. Overall our study identify drivers and focus points of consumption and provides a contemporary picture of Danish urban consumption-related environmental impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper presents a novel approach for absolute sustainability assessment of a building's environmental performance. It is demonstrated how the absolute sustainable share of the earth carrying capacity of a specific building type can be estimated using carrying capacity based normalization factors. A building is considered absolute sustainable if its annual environmental burden is less than its share of the earth environmental carrying capacity. Two case buildings – a standard house and an upcycled single-family house located in Denmark – were assessed according to this approach and both were found to exceed the target values of three (almost four) of the eleven impact categories included in the study. The worst-case excess was for the case building, representing prevalent Danish building practices, which utilized 1563% of the Climate Change carrying capacity. Four paths to reach absolute sustainability for the standard house were proposed focusing on three measures: minimizing environmental impacts from building construction, minimizing impacts from energy consumption during use phase, and reducing the living area per person. In an intermediate path, absolute sustainability can be obtained by reducing the impacts from construction by 89%, use phase energy consumption by 80%, and the living area by 60%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon footprint (CFP) is widely applied as an indicator when assessing environmental sustainability of products and services. The objective of the present study is to evaluate the validity of CFP as overall environmental indicator for representing the environmental burden of residents from urbanized areas. Applying four different Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methods environmental impact profiles were determined for the consumption patterns of 1281 Danish urban residents. Six main consumption components were distinguished including road transport, air travel, food, accommodation (covering consumption of materials for the construction of dwellings) and use of energy in terms of thermal energy, and electricity. The results for the individual consumption components showed a strong correlation between CFP and nearly all other impact indicators for all the applied LCIA methods However, upon aggregation of the indicator results across consumption components, the impact indicators for the total consumption showed no significant correlation between CFP and the other impact scores for any of the four impact assessment methods. These findings suggest that while CFP can be a good indicator of the environmental burden associated with specific activities, this is not the case for more complex activities (such as consumption patterns related to urban life styles). This conclusion discourages the use of CFP as sustainability measure in relation to regulation of private or public consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the problem of selecting the most sustainable stormwater management alternative in developing countries in a dense urban context. Firstly, suitable Low Impact Development (LID) stormwater management measures for dense urban areas in developing countries were identified based on critical review of literature. Alternatives have been formulated as varying percentages (degree of adoption) of these suitable measures to manage the stormwater sustainably. Further, a novel decision-making framework is developed which generates the hierarchy for selection of the most sustainable stormwater management alternative. Four main criteria (technical, economic, environmental and social) comprising three quantitative and eight qualitative indicators have been used for evaluating seven alternatives. The regional and local societal priorities are captured through criteria-weightings and are translated into a decision-making methodology. Experts' opinions have been included using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). One of the most widely used Multiple Attribute Decision-Making (MADM) method, TOPSIS, is used to rank the alternatives and to identify the most sustainable alternatives. Various scenarios to represent different stakeholders' perspectives have been articulated. Alternative with medium level of cost implication and satisfactory level of performance is chosen by the decision making method in most of the scenarios. The proposed decision making approach can be used for selecting sustainable stormwater management options in densely populated areas of developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the development and application of a user-friendly, scenario-based decision support tool (TechSelect 1.0). The objective of the study focuses on implementation of the ‘scenario-based’ multiple attributes decision-making (MADM) approach recently proposed by Kalbar et al. (2012a) . The tool incorporates multiple scenarios to deal with complex decision-making situations typically encountered in urban, suburban and rural areas. The scenario-based decision-making implemented through the tool reduces complexity in the selection of the appropriate wastewater treatment technology. It also uses a life cycle sustainability assessment framework for assessing technologies from environmental (life cycle assessment), economic (life cycle costing) and social (various sustainability indicators) perspectives. In addition, a user-friendly computational platform has been provided for the convenience of end users and stakeholders. The tool has been tested and validated on two real-life case studies pertaining to the problem of decision-making under complex situations. The results clearly explain the technology selection process and justify the simplicity of the tool in both the case studies. The proposed tool will broaden the application of scenario-based decision-making approaches in wastewater management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Many technological alternatives for wastewater treatment are available, ranging from advanced technologies to conventional treatment options. It is difficult to select the most appropriate technology from among a set of available alternatives to treat wastewater at a particular location. Many factors, such as capital costs, operation and maintenance costs and land requirement, are involved in the decision-making process. Sustainability criteria must also be incorporated into the decision-making process such that appropriate technologies are selected for developing economies such as that of India. A scenario-based multiple-attribute decision-making (MADM) methodology has been developed and applied to the selection of wastewater treatment alternative. The four most commonly used wastewater treatment technologies for treatment of municipal wastewater in India are ranked for various scenarios. Six scenarios are developed that capture the regional and local societal priorities of urban, suburban and rural areas and translate them into the mathematical algorithm of the MADM methodology. The articulated scenarios depict the most commonly encountered decision-making situations in addressing technology selection for wastewater treatment in India. A widely used compensatory MADM technique, TOPSIS, has been selected to rank the alternatives. Seven criteria with twelve indicators are formulated to evaluate the alternatives. Different weight matrices are used for each scenario, depending on the priorities of the scenario. This study shows that it is difficult to select the most appropriate wastewater treatment alternative under the “no scenario” condition (equal weights given to each attribute), and the decision-making methodology presented in this paper effectively identifies the most appropriate wastewater treatment alternative for each of the scenarios. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Increasing urbanization and rapid depletion of resources have forced authorities to shift from traditional linear system of take-make-use-dispose to circular system of resource conservation. Circular Economy (CE) is a sustainable development approach that works on the waste management strategy of reduce, reuse, recycle, and recover. Considerable work has been performed on CE in various sectors such as in electronic sector, construction sector, automotive sector, etc. However, CE in the water sector is gaining rapid attention, because of imbalance in water resources and the prevailing linear approach. The aim of this study is to review the world-wide growth of CE concept in the water sector from an economic, environmental, social, and technical perspective. 98 publications were selected by systematic literature review and categorized in economic, environmental, social, and technical criteria including a combination of multiple criteria. In this study, the world-wide status of CE implementation in the water sector is assessed and strategies to encourage and enhance CE implementation are proposed. The six BS8001:2017 principles and 6Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle, reclaim, recover, restore) of waste management are critically analyzed for deriving recommendations and successful implementation of CE in water sector. Finally, challenges and opportunities to implement CE in the water sector in India are discussed. Image 1 • Worldwide growth of Circular economy (CE) in the water sector is reviewed. • Confluence of 6Rs and BS8001:2017 principles is needed for CE implementation. • Challenges and opportunities to implement CE strategies in India are discussed. • Framework needs to be developed to monitor CE implementation in water sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]