Plumbing Africa February 2018 | Page 23

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