Assessment of the viability and sustainability of an integrated waste management system for the city of Campinas (Brazil), by means of ecological cost accounting

The population growth of cities increases the generation of construction building waste (CBW) and wastewater and, respectively, their environmental impacts. The present study shows a new technology to manage of the sewage and construction wastes from Campinas city, Brazil, based on the ecological cost accounting theory. In this way, the treatment of the crude sewage from Anhumas Wastewater Treatment Plant was made by decantation using the construction building waste. The organic amendment was obtained from the decanted sludge, which has been used in the recovery of a poor soil. From the supernatant liquid was obtained the reusing water, which has been tested in irrigation process. The efficiencies of the organic amendment and reusing water have been assessed by the quantity of the germinated bean seeds on the poor soil. Results show that the best condition to organic amendment production was the one in which a total soil layer of 2 cm and 100 mL/L of CBW were used, which yielded a gain in soil fertility of 11.11%. It was verified that 85% of bean seeds have been germinated on soil, when it irrigated these seeds with the reusing water, being 6% larger than control water. All parameters of lower water quality were reduced above of 90%, keeping the water in according to Brazilian standards. The cost evaluation of reusing water and organic amendment production shows a saving of US$ 81.1 million, indicating the social, ecological and economical viabilities of the new technology developed and demonstrated in this work. In that sense, this work provided a possible environmental solver based on the ecological cost accounting theory for the city of Campinas, Brazil. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.