Discover the Editor’s Choice: from each issue of leading journal, Water Science & Technology, the Core Team of Editors will select one outstanding paper to make Open Access and share across IWA Publishing platforms.
IWA Publishing is pleased to announce the sixth Editor's Choice paper, selected by Jo Burgess, is now Open Access (CC BY NC-ND):
Environmental and economic performance evaluation of municipal wastewater treatment plants in India: a life cycle approach
Sheetal Kamble, Anju Singh, Absar Kazmi, Markus Starkl
Water Science & Technology, March 2019; 79 (6): 1102–1112. doi: https://doi.org/10.2166/wst.2019.110
Why was this paper selected as the Editor's Choice?
"I selected this paper because although the mechanisms of wastewater treatment are of course of fundamental importance, and without them we would have no functional treatment systems, they are only half of the job of the water sector. Unless we also understand how to effectively cost wastewater treatment and provide compelling arguments for our treatment choices, wastewater treatment will remain to be viewed as a necessary but unwelcome expense and be undertaken so as to dispose of the wastewater as cheaply as possible. However, the cheap option is not usually the actual most cost-effective option if we consider the long term costs, and the non-financial costs. Now that life cycle analysis and life cycle cost tools are better developed, we can see that measuring the performance of wastewater treatment works by treated effluent quality alone creates unintended consequences in environmental protection, pollution prevention, and the demand for resources such as energy. "
Jo Burgess, Editor
