ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY
21
Municipal and urban
wastewater
Municipal wastewater originates from domestic, industrial,
commercial, and institutional sources within a given human
settlement or community.
By Extracted from the United Nations World Water Development Report 2017
Urban wastewater includes both municipal
wastewater and urban run-off. Since municipal and
urban wastewater production is heavily dependent
on the form and function of urban systems, the
current and future patterns of urbanisation must
be critically examined in order to develop more
sustainable approaches to wastewater management
in the coming decades.
Figure 1 shows a breakdown of sanitation coverage by
region, and hence of formal wastewater collection. It is
clearly evident that sewers for wastewater collection are
the favoured choice for much of the developed world, in
spite of the use of on-site services in many rural areas and
in areas undergoing unplanned urbanisation.
URBANISATION AND ITS IMPACT ON
WASTEWATER PRODUCTION