Different stakeholders’ opinions toward the sustainability of common textile wastewater treatment technologies in Turkey: A Case study Istanbul province

This study aims to investigate the differences in stakeholders opinions about the sustainability of the common wastewater treatment technologies for textile mills in Turkey, through a ranking hierarchy that provides a unified performance evaluation scheme in economic, technical, environmental and social dimensions. To achieve this goal, a Multi-Attribute-Decision-Making (MADM) method has been developed using the analytical hierarchy process approach (AHP). Sustainability performance scores and their importance weights were collected from three carefully selected stakeholders. The discrepancies in their perceptions of the sustainability paradigm were evaluated. The results are interpreted with sustainability criteria and their relevant indicators provided a detailed view about their opinion, and awareness to address the characteristics and limitations of different types of wastewater treatment technologies. In the case of our study, the findings show that chemical treatment related technologies demonstrated lowest sustainable alternatives in the case of textile industry. On the other hand, membrane biological reactor (MBR), rotating biological contactor (RBC), and sequencing batch reactor (SBR) were competitive technologies in terms of the sustainability criteria.