Municipal wastewater treatment is central to the Clean Water campaign, directly affecting urban water environment quality and residents' quality of life. For a long time the sector has operated on a “pay by volume” model that emphasises quantity over quality. With plants and pipe networks maintained separately, network inspection was often delayed, stormwater and sewage mixed, and external water infiltrated — causing large fluctuations in inlet quality. Conventional filtration struggled to cope, with media clogging, caking and unstable compliance, raising O&M costs and undermining water environment outcomes.

To solve these problems, many regions have introduced integrated plant-network O&M and a “pay for performance” model, fundamentally changing conventional operation and bringing municipal wastewater treatment into a new era of refined, standardised management. Integrated plant-network O&M combines the management resources of treatment plants and sewer networks, linking network inspection, source pollution control, process optimisation and water quality monitoring, which effectively resolves stormwater-sewage mixing and external water infiltration and keeps inlet quality stable. The pay-for-performance model ties payment to effluent compliance, compelling operators to raise their O&M standards and securing long-term stable compliance.

Against this backdrop, more and more municipal plants are focusing on process upgrades. Addressing the pain points of conventional filtration — ageing media, frequent clogging and water- and energy-intensive backwashing — they are switching to high-performance glass media and upgrading their filtration systems. With high-precision solids capture, large holding capacity, resistance to caking and self-antibacterial properties, the new glass media improves treatment performance, reduces backwash frequency and O&M intensity, helps plants save energy and achieve stable compliance, and fits the refined O&M needs of integrated plant-network operation — making it the preferred option for municipal wastewater upgrading. The model is already in place in Xiangtan (Hunan), Hangzhou (Zhejiang), Shenzhen (Guangdong) and elsewhere, with compliance rates consistently above 98%, providing a replicable and scalable template for reforming municipal wastewater operation in China.