Environmentally Sound Technologies in Wastewater Management

Environmentally Sound Technologies are technologies that help protect the quality of the environment. It may be
argued that technologies used to manage wastewater are inherently environmental technologies, because without
these technologies the pollutants in wastewater will negatively affect the environment. Some of these technologies
may utilise less energy than others, produce less air pollution or hazardous sludge, or are more suited to wastewater
and sludge reuse. Properly designed, constructed, maintained and operated technologies can achieve protection of
public health and the environment, and are more sustainable as it can recycle water and nutrients, which are
beneficial to sustaining ecosystems and life.

The application of a technology is dependent on local physical factors including land availability, its topography,
climate, soil, availability of energy and existing land uses. Sound technology practice is therefore dependent on being
able to fit the technology to the local conditions.

In a typical wastewater management system imbibing environmentally sound technology depicted above,
emphasises the need to treat industrial wastewaters containing toxic substances separately, and not to mix
industrial wastewaters with domestic wastewater or storm water. Also, Nutrients in the wastewater are reused to
grow food. In this way there is not the need to use as much chemical fertiliser for wastewater treatment and at the
same time, there much less discharge of nutrients to the river. The problem of resource depletion and pollution of
the river is overcome by closing the material cycles. A well-planned wastewater management system should be:
 Energy efficient - be developed within a catchment basin to use gravity flow
 Environmentally sound - reuse wastewater nutrients to prevent pollution
 Economically efficient - balancing economy of scale of treatment and the cost of the construction/
installation
 Community orientated - afford the technology (funds, skills) and its operation.

The choice of technology is determined by environmental, economic and social factors. Achievement of protection
of environmental quality is implicitly assumed when we consider technologies for wastewater management. These
considerations are:
(i) the need to protect the environment and
(ii) the imperative of recycling/reusing the water and nutrients in the water.
The first factor is usually taken into account by making sure that standards for discharge of wastewater are met.
Standards alone should not be relied upon, because it is the capacity of the environment to assimilate the wastes
that should not be exceeded. Each local environment has its own capacity depending amongst others on the natural
throughflow of water, climatic, vegetation and soil conditions.
Summary of Wastewater Management Technologies (with relative costs, environmental impact & maintenance
requirement) is mentioned below which, although does not cover all available technologies, however it does
represent the major technologies for most situations.