Date of Publication :2nd April 2021

Abstract: At the beginning of the 21st century, the world faces a water quality crisis resulting from continuous population growth, urbanization, land use change, industrialization, food production practices, increased living standards and poor water use practices and wastewater management strategies. Wastewater management (or the lack thereof) has a direct impact on the biological diversity of aquatic ecosystems, disrupting the fundamental integrity of our life support systems, on which a wide range of sectors, from urban development to food production and industry, depend. It is essential that wastewater management be considered as part of an integrated, full life cycle, eco-system-based management system that operates across all three dimensions of sustainable development (social, economic and environmental), geographical borders, and includes both freshwater and marine waters. This study deals with the basic concepts of wastewater management; Case studies on different sustainable methods adopted in wastewater management such as the NEWater Technology in Singapore, Activated sludge method with waste stabilization pond in Avadi- Chennai and the sewage fed system which is an ecological sanitation approach of wastewater management in Kolkata; Comparing the three case studies, also compares the effluent standards of generated sewage in three case studies with the global and national sewage effluent limits and finally certain recommendations are suggested for developing a sustainable approach of wastewater management. From all these we can conclude that the sustainable approach will be the future of wastewater management systems that can efficiently use the wastewater generated and also promotes reuse and recycling of the wastewater, considering wastewater not as a burden but as a resource.

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