The goal to achieve urban water sustainability is likely to be hindered by current regulations in China. Setting holistic, flexible and ecologically benign pollutant discharge standards can help China’s efforts to shape a more sustainable wastewater management approach.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52192681, U21A20160 and 51821006).
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Nature Sustainability thanks Haoran Duan and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
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Li, WW., Yu, HQ. Recasting China’s urban wastewater management standards. Nat Sustain 8, 6–8 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01487-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01487-4
