Sustainability assessment of Hybrid constructed Wetlands vis-à-vis conventional activated Sludge processes for Municipal wastewater treatment

One of the life essential tool for estimation of environmental performance of any system is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which is equally, if not more, valid in assessing the environmental systems themselves, such as sewage treatment plants. The present study attempts a comparative LCA-based environmental assessment of a Constructed Wetland (CW) and an Activated Sludge Processing (ASP) based Sewage Treatment Plant (STP), using the SIMAPRO software, encompassing the evaluation of various impact categories, in addition to energy demand and water footprint as well. The studies revealed the STP’s to be higher energy-intensive and emission-generating processes where as CW’s demonstrated a much lower carbon footprint and resource-consuming process. In fact, as per normalized impact assessment, CW also proves to be a low global warming, resource depletion and eco-toxicity and even significantly low energy and water footprint option.