Modeling for sustainability: Life cycle assessment application to evaluate environmental performance of water recycling solutions at the dwelling level

Green Smart Technology for Water (GST4Water): Life Cycle Analysis of Urban Water Consumption

“…The application of LCA methodology started defining the goal of the study, i.e., the evaluation of environmental impact assessment for GRS implementation at a district planning level. In order to achieve the identified goal: 1 m 3 of reclaimed water has been chosen as the functional unit, following the major literature, Byrne et al [23], and the previous steps of the study [12]; •…”

“…Environmental impacts of the selected management practices (i.e., greywater tanks) can be assessed by means of life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. This powerful tool applied to water recycling solutions provides synthetic indicators for the evaluation of environmental benefits [12]. Following an earlier work [12], that focuses on evaluating and comparing the environmental impacts of different recycling and reuse water solutions at the building scale, the present study aims to conduct a similar investigation at a larger scale (district scale), using life cycle assessment (LCA) as a methodology.…”

“…Within the framework of this particular application, LCA applied by Zanni et al [12] seems to suggest that the best outcomes, in terms of environmental benefit, should be pursued either through the maximization of usage-intensity of the solutions or with the application on a wider scale, as proposed in the present paper, moving from a single dwelling to neighborhoods and the district scale in order to optimize possible solutions (i.e., urban green technologies) for water recycling. A similar optimization and LCA approach were investigated by Angrill et al [17] and Vargas Parra [18], for rainwater harvesting systems (RHS) and related infrastructure, in order to explain correctly the actual environmental benefits or, on the contrary, hot spots and disadvantages.…”

“…The research work represents the last step of the above mentioned GST4Water project [12], with the aim to implement the environmental assessment of the urban green technologies' application at the district scale. The previous work focused at the household level, with the evaluation of rainwater harvesting systems (RHS) and greywater recovery systems (GRS) for different sizes of households in terms of water recovery opportunity and global environmental impact of the solutions.…”

“…In a previous contribution [12], a quantification of environmental impacts attributable to alternative water supply systems, as well as greywater tanks, was carried out in an LCA framework. This recent work, using two combined models (LCA model and a hydrological model) applied to several configurations of buildings, shows how the use intensity of the solution is tightly bound to impact: indeed, the installation of greywater storage and treatment systems provide a positive impact for densely populated buildings (users served ≥ 30).…”