PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Water and Wastewater Management
This article is part of the Research TopicWhat’s Ahead: Navigating the Future of Environmental ScienceView all 9 articles
Next Generation of Domestic Wastewater Management
Provisionally accepted
- Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden
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The next generation of wastewater management must go beyond centralised treatment to meet emerging environmental and regulatory demands. This paper explores source separation as a complementary strategy, enabling tailored treatment of greywater, urine, and faeces. By decentralising processes and recovering resources, especially nutrients and energy, new systems can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and nutrient loads on existing infrastructure and receiving environments. Innovations in urine concentration and fertiliser production demonstrate the feasibility of turning waste into valuable products. A paradigm shift towards source-separated sanitation is essential for climate neutrality and staying within planetary boundaries.
Keywords: Recycling, source separation, Sanitation, resource recovery, Urine
Received: 05 Oct 2025; Accepted: 23 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Vinnerås. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Björn Vinnerås, bjorn.vinneras@slu.se
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