Costructed Wetlands. A biological alternative wastewater treatments and its role in the new circular economy

The climate changes, the natural resources depletion, the population number increase are alarm bells for the future that must push the humanity to turn on more sustainable use of the natural resources, particularly the water. The water management must shift towards solutions acted to protect, safeguard, and sustainably use the available water resources. A new water scheme must be implemented, in which the waste paradigm must be overtaken and substituted with resource-oriented one. The Thesis aims to present the Constructed Wetland (CW) technology, an attractive green solution for wastewater treatment that nowadays is consolidated as a efficient and valid Natural Based alternative to the conventional systems. The different typologies of CWs are exposed as well as their advantages, disadvantages, and applications. The removal pollutant processes (biological, physical, and chemical processes) occurred within, are deeply analysed and the choice of the suitable vegetation species depending on the wastewater characteristic discussed. Furthermore, I give a brief overview on the European and Italian regulations before explaining in details the design (preliminary and empirical) methods. The treatment goodness and effectiveness are discussed and commented with helping of working applications. Finally, the future role of the CWs systems in circular economy approach is clarified and an overview on the water management scheme modification (from waste paradigm to resource-oriented concept) is provided. The potential applications of CWs within this new scheme are outlined and an in-depth study on recreative applications of CW (Natural Swimming Pools technology) are presented.