LCA on wastewater and sludge management for local decision-making in Gothenburg – are new LCA method developments enough?

Other conference contribution, 2019

This paper describes an LCA study that was made to inform decision-makers in Gothenburg about two different sludge management options. Incineration of anaerobically digested sludge with recovery of a phosphorus fertiliser product seemed preferable to using pasteurised anaerobically digested sludge in agriculture. Aspects under the control of the decision-makers were important for overall results, and caused the main differences between the studied systems, indicating considerable potential for local improvement efforts. Applying a human toxicity characterisation method with a more sludge specific fate model were important, but not crucial, for the results. However, the results are connected to large uncertainties and remaining challenges are discussed in the paper.