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Special Issue Editors

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue will be comprised of selected papers from the proceedings of the conference WATER CHALLENGES IN XXI CENTURY, and the IWA conference that will be held in Livorno, 11–13 September 2017. The Special Issue aims to gather the experiences from several countries referring to sustainable water use, including the adoption of household devices for water savings, the levels of water tariff for disincentive water use, rationing, and new water sources, including desalinization and reuse of treated wastewater for agricultural and industrial purposes. The Special Issue also aims to select several contributions on water consumption accountability and disclosure practices on water use and reuse followed by institutions, public administrations, and firms.

Papers selected for this Special Issue will be subject to a rigorous peer review procedure with the aim of a wide dissemination of research results, developments and applications.

Prof. Dr. Andrea Guerrini
Prof. Dr. Giulia Romano
Prof. Dr. Rui Cunha Marques
Prof. Dr. Francesco Fatone
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Water use
water savings
reuse
fertigation
water footprint
accountability
reporting

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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12 pages, 509 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A New Framework for Assessing the Sustainability Reporting Disclosure of Water Utilities

by Silvia Cantele, Thomas A. Tsalis and Ioannis E. Nikolaou

Sustainability 2018, 10(2), 433; https://doi.org/10.3390/su10020433 - 07 Feb 2018

Cited by 40 | Viewed by 7143

Abstract

Sustainability reporting is becoming more and more widespread among companies aiming at disclosing their contribution to sustainable development and gaining legitimacy from stakeholders. This is more significant for firms operating in a public services’ context and mainly when supplying a fundamental public resource, like water utilities. While the literature on sustainability reporting in the water sector is scant, there is an increasing need to study the usefulness and quality of its sustainability disclosures to adequately inform the stakeholders about the activities of water utilities to protect this fundamental resource and general sustainable development. This article presents a novel assessment framework based on a scoring technique and an empirical analysis on the sustainability reports of Italian water utilities carried out through it. The results highlight a low level of disclosure on the sustainability indicators suggested by the main sustainability reporting guidelines (Global Reporting Initiative, (GRI), and Sustainability Accounting Standard Board, (SASB)); most companies tend to disclose only qualitative information and fail to inform about some material aspects of water management, such as water recycled, network resilience, water sources, and effluent quality. These findings indicate that sustainability reporting is mainly considered as a communication tool, rather than a performance measurement and an accountability tool, but also suggest the need for a new and international industry-specific sustainability reporting standard. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Challenges for a Sustainable Water Use and Re-Use)

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Review

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456 KiB

Open AccessReview

Wastewater Reuse in Agriculture: A Review about Its Limitations and Benefits

by María Fernanda Jaramillo and Inés Restrepo

Sustainability 2017, 9(10), 1734; https://doi.org/10.3390/su9101734 - 11 Oct 2017

Cited by 286 | Viewed by 22711

Abstract

For centuries, wastewater has been improperly used in agriculture, presenting potential risks to public health and the environment. In the context of scientific development, and confronted by an increasing water crisis, wastewater reuse merits consideration because the practice helps decrease water use pressure and moderates water pollution. Thus, this article presents a literature review that addresses the effects, both positive and negative, of wastewater use in agriculture, emphasizing the effects on the soil environment. The literature review reveals that, until the 1990s, research studies promoted the use of wastewater for irrigation purposes from a treatment approach, while proposing “end of pipe” conventional solutions. However, more recent research studies (2012–2016) reveal that agricultural reuse significantly affects soil texture properties, while also causing possible alterations of the biomass and microbiota. In addition, research in this period has been oriented to the quantitative evaluation of microbiological risk. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Challenges for a Sustainable Water Use and Re-Use)

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