Sustainability indicator identification and selection for an innovative conceptual system: Phosphorus recovery from dairy wastewater

Journal article, 2024

In Europe, a decrease in the availability of phosphate rock resources has led to the development of emerging technologies for phosphorus recovery, with the purpose of generating products that can be used as fertilisers. An innovative conceptual system dedicated to the phosphorus recovery from dairy wastewater is considered in the paper. New technologies need to be assessed using relevant sustainability indicators. In this study, we developed an approach for identifying and selecting indicators. Based on searches of literature and expert interviews, three different tools were developed: an indicator screening framework, a questionnaire for finding actor priorities, and a list of indicator selection criteria. The new approach was successfully used to narrow down an initial set of 382 indicators identified in the literature to 26 that were considered representative and practicable for the assessment of the considered system.