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Title: | Tracing wastewater resources: unravelling the circularity of waste using source, destination, and quality analysis |
Authors: | Renfrew, D Vasilaki, V Nika, E Harris, E Katsou, E |
Keywords: | circular economy;circularity assessment;resource traceability;assessment indicators;material flow analysis |
Issue Date: | 20-Nov-2023 |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Citation: | Renfrew, D. et al. (2024) 'Tracing wastewater resources: unravelling the circularity of waste using source, destination, and quality analysis', Water Research, 250, 120901, pp. 1 - 13. doi: 10.1016/j.watres.2023.120901. |
Abstract: | Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Current circularity assessment terminology restricts application to wastewater processes due to the focus on technical systems. Waste stream and wastewater discharge circularity definitions lead to paradoxical assessments that generate results of little value for evidence-based decision making. Therefore, a classification approach was developed to measure inflow and outflow circularity of the main wastewater resource flows using the principle of traceability, adopting the attitude that not all waste is created equally. Applying it to a wastewater treatment plant (12,000 m3/d load) showed how upstream agricultural, industrial, and human practices impact downstream treatment, and the effectiveness of resource cycling within the natural environment. Industrial actions increasing fossil carbon concentration (400 m3/d effluent at 1000 mgC/l) reduced inflow and outflow circularity by 16 % and 10.6 % respectively, as secondary and sludge treatment fossil emissions increase significantly. Alternatively, changes to human and agricultural practices (50 % reduction of detergent and synthetic fertiliser usage) improved phosphorus inflow and nitrogen outflow circularity by 5.2 % and 20.1 % respectively. This approach can educate and assign responsibility to water users for developing robust circular economy policy, shifting the pattern from promoting circularity to discouraging linear actions, overcoming the shared economic and environmental burden of linear water use. |
Description: | Data availability: Data will be made available on request. Supplementary materials are available online at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0043135423013416#sec0037 . |
URI: | https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/27764 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2023.120901 |
ISSN: | 0043-1354 |
Other Identifiers: | ORCID iD: D. Renfrew https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9399-9279 ORCID iD: V. Vasilaki https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4670-5618 ORCID iD: E. Harris https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7102-8305 ORCID iD: Evina Katsou https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2638-7579 120901 |
Appears in Collections: | Dept of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research Papers |
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FullText.pdf | Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). | 1.64 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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