Page 282 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

Support Sustainable Wastewater Treatment in Developing Countries 263

study shows the differences in results if regional and local data are considered, which
reinforces the need for regionalization of data.
However, in practice, the establishment of regional and even local specific inven-
tories for all substances that cause adverse health and environmental impacts is pro-
hibitively expensive, and in many cases, it is not even feasible (Yoshida et al., 2014).
So, these findings suggest the necessity of developing methodologies that indicate
how to determine what data must be analyzed at regional and local level. Initiatives
as presented in Hernandez-Padilla et al. (2017) are encouraged, as they provide a
methodology based on a contribution analysis of impacts, to determine the regional
data that needs to be collected.

12.5.3 sTanDarDizaTion of sTuDies
As already discussed, the high variability and diversity of procedures used in previ-
ous studies is one of the major challenges to the development of research in this area
and consequently, to its use as a decision-supporting tool. For Teodosiu et al. (2016),
who carried out an LCA study involving a wastewater system in Romania, these dif-
ferences among studies impose serious difficulties on the comparison and extrapola-
tion of results. It is important to note that this lack of standardization is not restricted
to the context of developing countries. Corominas et al. (2013) provided similar con-
clusions considering studies from developed countries and argued that the creation of
standardized procedures in wastewater LCA studies is required to ensure the quality
of the application of the LCA methodology. It is important to note that a standardiza-
tion procedure does not mean carrying out studies using a default process without
considering the specificities of region and location. Actually, standardization aims to
provide comparability and guidance to LCA studies to increase their reliability. So,
standardizing functional units, boundaries definition, impact categories, and LCA
methodology could be an interesting initiative. On the other hand, characterization,
factors, LCIs, energy mix, and other characteristics are highly dependent on local
conditions and must be analyzed case by case.

12.5.4 consiDeraTion of cosTs anD social issues
Considering that the main objective of LCA studies is to contribute to the sustain-
able development of sanitation systems in developing countries, it is recommended
that the three pillars of sustainability, economy, and environment and society have
to be considered in future works. Nowadays, LCA studies carried out in these coun-
tries are only focused on environmental aspects, although LCA presents variations
that allow the analysis to be extended to social and economic points of view. The
inclusion of both aspects is crucial in the context of developing countries, as they
present several socially related issues and financial limitations. Indeed, life cycle
costing (LCC) and social life cycle assessments (S-LCA) are robust methodologies
already widely used in other areas to provide useful information based on the life
cycle thinking approach. Rebtzer et al. (2003) was one of the first studies to incor-
porate LCC in LCA studies aiming to support the sustainable development of waste-
water systems. So, the incorporation of LCC and S-LCA in future LCA works on