Envisioning the LCA of a wastewater treatment plant

In today’s sustainability market where there are several tools to rate and grade the ‘green’ level of modern day infrastructure, the multi-tiered credit rating system called Envision provides an holistic approach to tackle the issue. Developed by the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI), Envision has around 60 sustainability credits to score points in order to reach a recognized level of achievement. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is another tool that is gaining industry-wide acceptance for assessing potential environmental impacts. LCA is recognized by Envision as a good way to assess several of the available credits in their system. An LCA performed for Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Facility (AWTF), Washington, D.C., USA was used as an example case study to show how credits could be calculated for a used water treatment facility. © IWA Publishing 2018.