Pollution Research Paper

DECENTRALISED WASTEWATER TREATMENT, A SUSTAINABLE APPROACH FOR USE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRY ENVIRONMENT

S.K. GUPTA, K. SAI RAMESH AND SHAIK SAMEER

Abstract

There are opportunities for implementing wastewater management systems based on a decentralized approach that may offer opportunities for wastewater re-use and resource recovery as well as improvements in local environmental health conditions. Typically in a decentralized system wastewater management is broken down to the neighbourhood level and to serve disaggregates of large urban areas, thereby making use of community scale and low cost onsite treatment facilities followed by subsoil waste disposal systems, such as parks or other green spaces to recycle nutrients for raising crops in urban, peri-urban or rural environments. The design strategy here revolves around to determine how close to the source of generation is it practical to address treatment and disposal which enables cost reduction and recycling of nutrients back into the environment. The paper delineates this technology and details some examples where such know-how is successfully applied and potentially used. The paper also emphasizes the importance of building the capacity of local organizations in appreciating the advantages offered by the decentralised technology so that it can be embedded with low cost waste treatment approaches to offer systems that are sustainable in the long run.