Environmental Advances 4 (2021) 100065 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Environmental Advances journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envadv Life cycle analysis approach to comparing environmental impacts of alternative materials used in the construction of small wastewater treatment plants David Pryce a,∗ , Fayyaz Ali Memon a , Zoran Kapelan a,b a College of Environment, Mathematics, and Physical Sciences, University of Exeter, EX4 4QF, United Kingdom b Department of Water Management, Delft University of Technology, Stevinweg 1, 2628CN Delft, Netherlands a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: LCA Sustainability Sewage treatment plant a b s t r a c t With the aim of reducing the environmental burden of decentralized wastewater treatment plants in India, this project investigated five primary materials (stainless steel (SS), mild steel (MS), glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP), high density polyethylene (HDPE), and reinforced concrete cement (RCC)) in terms of the relative envi- ronmental impact that each would incur across 13 midpoint and 4 endpoint impact categories during the early life stages. The results showed that SS demonstrated substantially higher impact in total (5.47 Pt) and across each of the endpoint categories, most notably human health (3.12 Pt). Further investigations demonstrated that this was largely fed by the respiratory inorganics midpoint category that accounted for 50 % of the total impact (2.75 Pt), while global warming (0.93 Pt), non-renewable energy (0.70 Pt) and terrestrial ecotoxicity (0.62 Pt) were the only other considerable impacts. GFRP incurred the second greatest impact overall (2.32 Pt), while MS, RCC and HDPE followed with 1.82 Pt, 0.78 Pt, and 0.39 Pt respectively. HDPE afforded the greatest efficiency in all midpoint categories except carcinogens where RCC incurred the least environmental cost. Results were then compared with previous work and likely causal factors highlighted. Further study is recommended to investigate the longevity of the alternative materials in a wastewater containment role to support these results. 1. Introduction As world leaders pledge to cut emissions and reduce environmen- tal impact, greater focus is being given to the sustainable develop- ment of infrastructure to realise these gains (Arce and Gullón, 2000; Mirza, 2006; Doyle and Havlick, 2009; Zayed et al., 2011; UN Gen- eral Assembly, 2015; Battacharya et al., 2020). Perhaps most critical is ensuring the availability of water and sanitation to all as targeted by the United Nations (UN) under the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established in 2016 (UN General Assembly 2015). With clean wa- ter and sanitation now officially recognised as a human right by the UN General Assembly, global momentum has been gaining to supply these services to those still lacking these basic facilities (World Health Organi- zation, & United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund 2013; WHO, 2015; Cha et al., 2017). Despite this, the World Health Organiza- tion (WHO) suggests a quarter of the world’s inhabitants still lack safe sanitation indicating significant amounts of water infrastructure is still needed (WHO, 2019). If this SDG is to be achieved by 2030 as targeted, then an environmentally-sensitive approach to its implementation will be necessitated. ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: dgp206@exeter.ac.uk (D. Pryce). India is recognised as a priority country for improved coverage of sanitation, accounting for much of the world’s deficit in sanitation (Coffey et al., 2015; Nandi et al., 2017). Despite government reports that Mohdi’s 5-year Clean India Mission had now successfully provided latrines to 95 % of households (National annual rural sanitation survey NARSS 2018-19. Government of India), independent assessments have reported a lack of adoption by communities due to poor quality and inadequate maintenance plans that may lead to overflow and increased sewage exposure (Coffey et al., 2015; Exum et al., 2020; Versano, 2020). Coverage in urban areas remains divided by social-economic factors (Cha et al., 2017; Saroj et al., 2020), while the negative health effects and mortality in children due to poor sanitation are exacerbated by high population density (Hathi et al., 2017; Augsburg and Rodriquez- Lesmes, 2018). Even before environmental considerations, coverage of effective sanitation continues to be thwarted by financial and circum- stantial constraints (Wilderer, 2005). Decentralization affords a plausible solution for overcoming key challenges of implementation in India with reduced environmen- tal impact (Wilderer, 2005; Massoud et al., 2009; Starkl et al., 2012; Brunner et al., 2018). Economics and environmental impact are intrinsically linked when one considers the cost of each during https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envadv.2021.100065 Received 14 February 2021; Received in revised form 30 April 2021; Accepted 30 April 2021 2666-7657/Crown Copyright © 2021 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)