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• An approach for identifying and selecting sustainability indicators for assessing technologies at low TRL. • Three distinct screening tools – a framework, a questionnaire for actor priorities, and a list of indicator selection criteria – are developed and employed to select indicators. • From an initial pool of 382 indicators, the study narrows down to a set of 26 representative indicators deemed essential for assessing the considered system at its early stages. • The new approach outlined in the paper is found to be practical to implement and time- and resource-efficient, when no standard set of indicators exists. In Europe, a decrease in the availability of phosphate rock resources has led to the development of emerging technologies for phosphorus recovery, with the purpose of generating products that can be used as fertilisers. An innovative conceptual system dedicated to the phosphorus recovery from dairy wastewater is considered in the paper. New technologies need to be assessed using relevant sustainability indicators. In this study, we developed an approach for identifying and selecting indicators. Based on searches of literature and expert interviews, three different tools were developed: an indicator screening framework, a questionnaire for finding actor priorities, and a list of indicator selection criteria. The new approach was successfully used to narrow down an initial set of 382 indicators identified in the literature to 26 that were considered representative and practicable for the assessment of the considered system. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant increase in phosphorus-rich dairy wastewater coincides with a decrease in the availability of fossil phosphate rock resources in Europe. This confluence of events has led to the development of technologies for phosphorus recovery from dairy wastewater. This study aims to inform and guide such development with regard to life cycle environmental impacts prior to their implementation in dairy contexts. With the lack of inventory data at this point and the non-existence of earlier life cycle assessments on the use of phosphorus recovery technologies in a dairy context in literature, we performed a meta-analysis where we extracted and compared published results on life cycle environmental impacts from two fields (1) dairy industries, with a focus on the dairy wastewater treatment and (2) phosphorus recovery technologies in a municipal wastewater treatment context. The results show that despite its intended effect, normal dairy wastewater treatment in many cases still contributes significantly to eutrophication. Most of the phosphorus recovery technologies examined here exhibited a lower global warming potential and cumulative energy demand than those of dairy wastewater treatment processes. It indicates that problem shifting could be avoided when phosphorus recovery is introduced. However, no technologies involving incineration have had the impact of acidification reported which represents a potential knowledge gap since impacts are expected related to incineration emissions. A comparison between the extracted data for phosphorus recovery technologies shows that there are lower impacts related to technologies that recover phosphorus from the liquid phase, than from sludge or ash. • Meta-analysis of published life cycle assessment studies. • Environmental assessment of a conceptual system: P recovery from dairy wastewater. • Three environmental impact categories allowed cross-comparison: CED, GWP, and AP. • The P recovery technologies bring a low impact for CED and GWP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]