The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly the SDG 6, focuses on water and sanitation, sustainable management of water resources, wastewater and ecosystems, and the importance for a sustainable environment. Therefore, considering that 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development invites countries to engage in actions of systematic monitoring and review of progress toward intelligent consumption of the water resources, this chapter aims to provide a snapshot on potential water recovery actions.
In the European context, Italian regions exert an important pressure on water resources. Particularly, the Italian consumption of water resources is due to the agricultural and agro-processing sector which uses 70%–80% of the total. Therefore, using the concept of water footprint (WF), the authors focused on the consumption associated to some important agricultural industry aiming to design some innovative industrial water conservation models (e.g., water reuse, recovery nutrients and sludge) to reduce WF, increase the recovery of water resources, and address the SDGs contained in the United Nations Agenda 2030.
Furthermore, starting from a literature review of past studies, the authors highlighted the research needs and the practical implications associated with water recovery. With the aim to present a national overview on wastewater reuse practices, the authors also used studies based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), WF, statistical analysis, and governmental reports. Particularly, this chapter was written under the GRINS(Growing, Resilient, Inclusive and Sustainable) Programme, PNRR_PE_71, aimed to build datasets for the circular economy of the main Italian production systems. Moreover, this programme was financed by Next Generation EU within the Italian Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR).