摘要
Purpose Wastewater treatment plants produce high environmental impacts on receiving water bodies and pose economic burdens on municipalities or industrial facilities. Their overall operational costs and achieved effluent quality depend very much on the influent type, presence of priority pollutants, treatment technology and required effluent quality (for discharge or for recycle/reuse). Life cycle assessment (LCA), environmental impact quantification (EIQ) and water footprint (WF) are important instruments for sustainability assessments applied for products, production and consumption evaluations in connection with natural resources depletion and pollution threats. This study focuses on the environmental assessment of a municipal wastewater treatment plant (MWWTP) discharges by means of these three evaluation methods with the purpose to understand their (methodological) weak and strong points in capturing the impacts. Such a comparative analysis is necessary to understand how the (individual) advantages provided by each of these instruments can be complimentarily used to improve an assessment framework for various stakeholders concerned with water use cycle management (regional water operators, water management authority, public authorities, research entities, societal organizations, etc.).