Environmental assessment of drinking water transport and distribution network use phase for small to medium-sized municipalities in Spain

Sanjuan-Delmás, David; Petit‐Boix, Anna; Gasol, Carles M.; Farreny, Ramon; Villalba, Gara; Suárez-Ojeda, María Eugenia; Gabarrell, Xavier; Josa, Alejandro; Rieradevall, Joan

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.09.042

Cited by 20 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 18 publications

(33 reference statements)

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“…Most of them assessed constructive designs (Petit-Boix et al, 2014;Sanjuan-Delmás et al, 2014;Venkatesh et al, 2009), but there is a lack of LCA and LCC studies that integrate structural and local aspects. The configuration of cities can affect the network design and the pumping energy (Petit-Boix et al, 2015;Roux et al, 2011;Sanjuan-Delmás et al, 2015), and a combination of life cycle tools and GIS might provide further knowledge to evaluate water networks at the city scale.…”

Section: Watermentioning

confidence: 99%

Application of life cycle thinking towards sustainable cities: A review

Petit‐Boix

Llorach-Massana

Sanjuan-Delmás

et al. 2017

Journal of Cleaner Production

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130

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Defining sustainable cities is not straightforward. The main issues involved in urban sustainability are buildings, energy, food, green areas and landscape, mobility, urban planning, water and waste; and their improvement is promoted through different strategies. However, a quantitative method, such as life cycle thinking (LCT), is essential to evaluating these strategies. This paper reviews LCT studies related to urban issues to identify the main research gaps in the evaluation of these improvement strategies. The review identifies the main sustainability strategies associated with each urban issue and compiles articles that deal with these strategies through LCT, including environmental life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle costing (LCC), social LCA (S-LCA) and life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA), as well as integrated analyses with combined tools. Water, waste and buildings are the urban issues that accounted for a larger amount of studies. In contrast, a limited number of papers assessed urban planning and energy (excluding energy in buildings). Strong interrelations among urban issues were identified, most of them including water. In terms of methods, 79% of the studies exclusively applied life cycle tools (i.e., LCA, LCC, S-LCA or LCSA). Within this group, the environmental dimension was the focus of 84% of the papers. Single environmental indicators (e.g., global warming) were common in 20% of the analyses, highlighting the need to integrate more impact categories to prevent trade-offs. In the field of social and sustainability assessment, there is a need for methodological advances that foster their application in urban areas. Further research should cover the thematic and methodological gaps identified in this paper, such as developing models that assess complex urban issues, generating comprehensive LCT studies and promoting multi-indicators. Life cycle tools might benefit from revising the methodology with stakeholders to optimize the understanding and communication of life cycle results for policy-and decision-making processes.

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Section: Watermentioning

confidence: 99%

Application of life cycle thinking towards sustainable cities: A review

Petit‐Boix

Llorach-Massana

Sanjuan-Delmás

et al. 2017

Journal of Cleaner Production

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130

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“…Considering the current carbon market pricing (13.5 euros per ton of CO 2 emissions; Kossoy and Guigon 2012), the savings from avoided CO 2 emissions by using RWH system can range from 0.03 to 26 euros per year per scenario (depending on the scenario) and representing a 0.02% of the yearly savings. Another avoided environmental impact is the fact that with the RWH system, the transport and distribution of tap water are avoided and with this also 0.074 kg CO 2 emissions per m 3 , according to Sanjuan-Delmás et al (2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rainwater harvesting systems reduce detergent use

Vargas-Parra

Rovira-Val

Gabarrell

et al. 2018

Int J Life Cycle Assess

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Purpose Due to population growth, urban water demand is expected to increase significantly, as well as the environmental and economic costs required to supply it. Rainwater harvesting (RWH) systems can play a key role in helping cities meet part of their water demand as an alternative to conventional water abstraction and treatment. This paper presents an environmental and economic analysis of RWH systems providing households with water for laundry purposes in a life cycle thinking perspective. Methods Eight urban RWH system scenarios are defined with varying population density and storage tank layout for existing buildings. Storage tank volume required is calculated using Plugrisost software, based on Barcelona rainfall and catchment area, as well as water demand for laundry, since laundry is a fairly constant demand of non-potable water. Life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) methodologies are applied for this study. Environmental impacts are determined using the ReCiPe 2008 (hierarchical, midpoint) and the cumulative energy demand methods. Net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR), and payback (PB) time were used in LCC. Savings from laundry additives due to the difference in water hardness was, for the first time, included in a RWH study. Results and discussion LCA results indicate that the best scenario consists of a 24-household building, with the tank spread on the roof providing up to 96% lower impacts than the rest of scenarios considered. These results are mainly due to the absence of pumping energy consumption and greater rainwater collection per cubic meter of built tank capacity. Furthermore, avoided environmental impacts from the reduction in detergent use are more than 20 times greater than the impacts generated by the RWH system. LCC indicates that RWH system in clusters of buildings or home apartments offer up to 16 times higher profits (higher NPV, higher IRR, and lower PB periods) than individual installations. Conclusions LCA and LCC present better results for high-density scenarios. Overall, avoided environmental and economic impacts from detergent reduction clearly surpass environmental impacts (in all categories except terrestrial acidification) and economic cost of the RWH system in most cases (except two scenarios). Another important finding is that 80% of the savings are achieved by minimizing detergent and fabric softener by using soft rainwater; and the remaining 20% comes from replacing the use of tap water.

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“…On the other hand, re-usable polyvinyl chloride pipes are less available for citizens, although their integration in a growing market of re-used products may become a way to manage the end-of-life of the current tap water distribution network. Moreover, polyvinyl chloride pipes have the lower global warming impact of the most common pipes used in urban water distribution networks ( Sanjuan-Delmás et al 2014). …”

Section: Soil Production Of Fruit Vegetablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Techniques and crops for efficient rooftop gardens in Bologna, Italy

Sanyé‐Mengual

Orsini

Oliver-Solà

et al. 2015

Agron. Sustain. Dev.

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Urban rooftop farming favours local food production. Although rooftop farming is perceived as a sustainable system, there is a lack of quantitative studies. There, we set up experiments in the community rooftop garden of a public housing building in Bologna, Italy, between 2012 and 2014. We grew lettuce, a leafy vegetable, using three techniques: nutrient film, floating hydroponic and soil cultivation. We also grew tomato, chilli pepper, eggplant, melon, watermelon on soils. Data was analysed by life cycle assessment for environmental and economic performance. Results reveal that the best techniques of lettuce cultivation to address global warming were floating in the summer, with 65-85 % less environmental impact per kilogran than nutrient film; and soil production in the winter, with 85-95 % less environmental impact. Furthermore, floating production was 25 % cheaper in summer, and soil was 65 % cheaper in winter, compared to the nutrient film technique. For soil production, eggplants and tomatoes showed the best environmental performances of about 74 g CO 2 per kg. Eggplant production in soil was cheapest at 0.13 € per kg.

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Environmental assessment of drinking water transport and distribution network use phase for small to medium-sized municipalities in Spain

Cited by 20 publications

References 18 publications

Application of life cycle thinking towards sustainable cities: A review

Application of life cycle thinking towards sustainable cities: A review

Rainwater harvesting systems reduce detergent use

Techniques and crops for efficient rooftop gardens in Bologna, Italy

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