Wastewater - Turning Problem to Solution

List of figures

Figure 0.1 Figure 0.2 Figure 1.1 Figure 1.2 Figure 1.3 Figure 1.4 Figure 2.1 Figure 2.2 Figure 2.3 Figure 2.4 Figure 2.5 Figure 2.6 Figure 2.7 Figure 2.8 Figure 2.9 Figure 2.10 Figure 2.11 Figure 2.12

The potential wastewater available for resource recovery and reuse ....................................................................................... xv Environmental implications and intervention points ................................................................................................................ xvii Progress since 2010 against the key messages from Sick Water?.............................................................................................. 3 Key areas of progress against the (a) short-term actions and (b) long-term actions recommended in the 2010 Sick Water? report .................................................................................................................................................................................. 4 Global water stress by country in 2020 and 2040 ...................................................................................................................... 11 Wastewater, SDG 6 and interdependencies across the SDGs ................................................................................................... 12 Municipal wastewater production across regions in 2015 and predicted until 2050 .............................................................. 19 Estimates of country level (a) domestic and manufacturing wastewater production (m 3 /year per capita), (b) collection (%), (c) treatment (%), and (d) reuse (%) at the country scale, based on 2015 data and reproduced from Jones et al. (2021)................................................................................................................................................................ 21 Circularity in wastewater management ...................................................................................................................................... 24 Schematic of the Billund Biorefinery ............................................................................................................................................ 25 Potential resources that can be recovered from wastewater..................................................................................................... 27 Increasing value propositions related to wastewater treatment based on increasing investments and cost recovery potential .................................................................................................................................................................. 28 Illustration of terms for wastewater and its reuse ..................................................................................................................... 30 The process for recovering wastewater as NEWater in Singapore ........................................................................................... 31 Changes in Windhoek water supply to increase the reuse of treated wastewater as a result of a period with drought .......... 32 Reuse of nutrient-rich treated water for food self-sufficiency in the Middle East and North Africa region ............................. 34 The potential for human urine-derived nutrients to meet global nitrogen and phosphorus demand in agriculture .............. 36 Global potential of nutrients embedded in wastewater at the global level in 2015, and their potential to offset the global fertilizer demand in agriculture, as well as to generate revenue..................................................................................... 37 Application of plant nutrients from chemical fertilizers compared to nutrients from human excreta .................................... 38 Potential for energy production from wastewater based on the 2015 wastewater production data and scenarios over coming decades for the years 2030, 2040 and 2050, based on the expected increase in wastewater volume and assuming full energy recovery from the wastewater........................................................................................................... 39 The barriers and concerns relating to wastewater resource recovery and its safe reuse ....................................................... 42 Availability of data across the wastewater chain including the number of countries for which wastewater data were available; and the percentage of population coverage (i.e. the proportion of the global population for which wastewater data were available).................................................................................................................................................. 47 Sanitation and waterborne antimicrobial resistance exposure risk........................................................................................... 50 Level of effectiveness and relative cost of various treatment methods for the removal of antibiotics .................................. 57 Trends in per capita water consumption in Singapore .............................................................................................................. 65 Trends in urbanization, annual water use and the annual quantity of wastewater discharged in China. Despite urbanization increasing, water use has decreased (top) and total wastewater discharge has, between 2014 and 2016, also now started to decrease (bottom) ............................................................................................................................. 65 Laufen’s Save! toilet has an EOOS “Urine Trap” to separately collect human urine at source ................................................ 68 Water collection, treatment and reuse by region......................................................................................................................... 69 A generalised schematic of typical wastewater treatment stages and opportunities for resource recovery......................... 70 Expansion in wastewater treatment capacity required by 2030 to achieve SDG 6.3 for the top 30 wastewater producing countries ..................................................................................................................................................................... 72 Finding the optimal solution to treating wastewater for resource recovery.............................................................................. 73 Dissolved organic carbon content and total suspended solids concentrations before and after treatment in the wastewater treatment plant, as compared with the Israeli Government guidelines for unlimited irrigation ........................... 76 Nature-based solutions systems for wastewater treatment ..................................................................................................... 78 Six building blocks to support wastewater resource recovery and reuse ................................................................................. 81 The three types of voluntary commitments under the United Nations Water Action Agenda ................................................. 84 The action framework and commitment mechanism of the Wastewater Zero Commitment Initiative ................................... 85 A timeline of the development of regulation, criteria and guidelines from 1918 to 2020......................................................... 94 Timeline of significant events and initiatives relevant to development of wastewater resource recovery and reuse since 2010 ........................................................................................................................................................................... 97

Figure 2.13 Figure 2.14

Figure 2.15 Figure 2.16

Figure 2.17 Figure 2.18 Figure 3.1 Figure 3.2

Figure 3.3 Figure 3.4 Figure 3.5 Figure 3.6

Figure 3.7 Figure 3.8

Figure 3.9 Figure 3.10 Figure 3.11 Figure 3.12 Figure 3.13 Figure 4.1

viii