1. Introduction
Increasing public awareness of environmentally related issues is helping to prompt increase governmental
legislation for environmental protection that is demanding ever more stringent water and wastewater treatment
standards. However, capital resources to implement and operate more conventional wastewater treatment
infrastructures and facilities are becoming limited. Therefore, the development of alternative, small-scale and
innovative economical water treatment technologies is being stimulated.
The most sustainable solutions for wastewater recycling should be passive, self-adaptive living systems
exploiting natural biogeochemical cycles occurring within microbial-based and plant-based unit process. Like their
naturally occurring counterparts, ecologically engineered systems provide ecosystem services that are self adaptive