Assessing Environmental Impacts of Wastewater Treatment Alternatives for Small‐Scale Communities

The effluents of wastewater treatment plants in small sized communities of less than 2000 population equivalent (PE), which are discharged into sensitive receiving water environments, must receive “appropriate treatment” according to the EU Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive. Appropriate treatment depends on the quality objectives of the receiving waters as well as the relevant provisions of the member states. In this study, wastewater treatment options, such as vegetated land treatment (VLT), constructed wetlands (CW), and activated sludge treatment (AST), by which effluents are discharged to sensitive and less sensitive areas are evaluated by the life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. For this purpose, data related to energy usage, land requirement, raw material consumption, and released emissions from the life phases were collected with an inventory study and the environmental impacts were assessed by using SimaPro 7.1 LCA software. The results obtained from the assessments were compared with each other, which indicated that for small‐scale communities VLT and CW are the most environmentally friendly wastewater treatment option.